Lot 110: Halim Al-Karim (Iraqi, b. 1963)

Halim Al-Karim (Iraqi, b. 1963)
King's Harem
signed, titled, numbered and dated 'Halim Al Karim King's Harem, 2008 2/3' (on the reverse)
Lambda print
88½ x 39in. (225 x 100cm.)
Executed in 2008, this work is this work is number two from an edition of three plus two artist proofs

Hossein Amirsadeghi (ed.), New Vision, London, 2009, cover and p.183 (illustrated in colour)

Private Collection, Switzerland

This lot offered for sale is subject to a 5% import duty on the importation value levied at the time of collection/shipment within the UAE.
"I search through the layers of collective memory and my personal experience in that context. In this process the main challenge for me is to identify and stay clear of the historical and contemporary elements of brainwash" (Halim Al-Karim, cited in Hossein Amirsadeghi (ed), New Vision, London, 2009, p. 182).

Halim Al-Karim trained as a ceramicist in Baghdad, working first as a ceramicist and a sculptor before turning his attention to photography. His huge out-of-focus images of figures, figurines, faces and masks blur the distinctions between the real and the unreal and between living things and objects. The absence of clarity reflects displacement, and what for Halim are unresolved issues, which relate especially to his time spent during the Iraqi army in the first Gulf War, when for three years he was hiding in the desert. Many of Al-Karim's works recall Orientalist prototypes, and the artist compares "politicians busy with their fancy life and ignoring their society issues" to the destructive tendencies of Orientalist fantasy (Halim Al-Karim, op cit, p.183).