Photos from Baghdad: Notes on the First National Art Exhibition for Arab Women Artists, 1980

Introduction 

In 2022, I visited Hala Choucair at the soon-to-open Saloua Raouda Choucair Foundation in Ras el-Maten, Lebanon. This experience began a line of inquiry that has informed my ongoing research on Arab women artists."2 Among the materials I encountered was a 1980 photograph depicting a gathering of leading Arab women artists, including Saloua Choucair herself. Stamps on the back of the photographs suggested a connection to The First National Art Exhibition for Arab Women Artists (1980) (Al-Maʿrad al-Qawmi al-Awwal lil-Nisāʾ al-ʿArabiyyāt), organised in Baghdad by the General Federation of Iraqi Women (GFIW), a Ba'athist women's organisation that, while also advancing the state's ideological agenda, promoted women's participation in education, culture, and military training."3 This photograph initiated my broader historiographical inquiry. Although it is preserved in Choucair's archive, the exhibition has received little scholarly attention in studies of exhibition histories, particularly Pan-Arab exhibitions.

This essay reconstructs the history of the exhibition, presenting its participating artists and the conditions under which it was conceived. It also situates the event within the broader artistic and political network in Iraq that shaped its organisation. Drawing on the exhibition guide, Saloua Raouda Choucair’s archive, and oral testimonies, it also considers the role of the GFIW in conceiving and facilitating the exhibition, asking how the organisation's agenda intersected with the artistic ambitions of its participants.

1.Why Baghdad? 

The evolution of Iraqi modernism is inseparable from the country’s social and political history and the ongoing negotiation of identity, gender, and power that shaped its artistic community."4 Artists’ experiences were deeply intertwined with Iraq’s shifting political landscape— – from the Ottoman period to the British mandate, through to the formation of the republic and later wars and sanctions"5— – which limited Iraqi artists’ participation in international artists' networks. Shifts in the political climate, most notably the transformative 1958 coup d'état (which overthrew the Hashemite monarchy and established the Iraqi Republic), the rise of the Ba’ath Party (an Arab nationalist and socialist political party that came to power in 1968), and subsequent wars profoundly shaped women’s participation in the arts. The GFIW played an important role in both supporting and regulating women’s activities in society and the arts (Shabout 2010, 150-151)."6 Following Saddam Hussein’s rise to power in 1979, Ba’athist ideology,"7 became increasingly influential."8

Throughout Iraq’s changing political climate, Baghdad remained a vital centre for art, architecture, and literature across the Arab world. Earlier generations of Iraqi artists often received artistic training through Ottoman military academies,"9 officers’ education in Istanbul, and through interactions with European and Orientalist traditions (Shabout 2008, 20; Ali 1994, 87-88; Lenssen 2024)."10 Beginning in the early 1930s, government scholarships enabled promising Iraqi artists to study abroad; by the 1960s, as the country built an artistic infrastructure, an emerging generation of artists frequently undertook formal fine arts training within Iraq itself.

After 1958, cultural policies changed substantially, leading to a vibrant cultural scene in Baghdad. Meanwhile, the state consolidated control over its institutions and established socialist realism as one of Iraq’s main aesthetic frameworks (Shabout 2008, 54-55). For many artists, participation in Ba'ath-sponsored institutions was less a matter of ideological commitment than of professional necessity as the state increasingly became the principal patron of artistic education, exhibition, and employment. This produced an environment in which artistic opportunities expanded as cultural life became mediated by state institutions. By 1980, Baghdad had developed this institutional infrastructure sufficiently to host one of the largest gatherings of women artists in the region to date.

Women artists were active participants in the Iraqi art scene, and they helped shape the language of modern Iraqi art. For instance, the pioneering work of Iraqi-Syrian artist Madiha Umar (1908–2005) in the 1940s marked an important turning point in the development of Hurufiyya, the creative use of Arabic script that signified artists’ increasingly confident expression of cultural identity."11 Widely recognised as one of the earliest artists to dedicate her practice to Arabic lettering (Shabout 2008, 70-72), Umar’s engagement with calligraphy developed while she was studying at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. Umar, in turn, drew inspiration from the writings of Turkish-born Nabia Abbott (1897–1981), a pioneer in Arabic and Islamic studies. Later, many women artists became members of prominent artist groups and exhibited at major local venues such as Al-Mansur Club, Al-Alawiyya Club, the Iraqi Women Union Hall, and internationally. They undertook leadership roles like those held by Layla al-Attar"12 and, consequently, established independent art spaces.

2. The First National Art Exhibition for Arab Women Artists, Baghdad (1980) 

(Al-Maʿrad al-Qawmi al-Awwal lil-Nisāʾ al-ʿArabiyyāt)

A pivotal but understudied event in the history of Arab modernisms, The First National Art Exhibition for Arab Women Artists was organised by the GFIW at the National Museum of Modern Art (Modern Art Gallery) in Baghdad from 16 July to 8 August 1980, bringing together around fifty-one artists belonging to multiple generations, countries, and artistic traditions from the Arab world. It included emerging artists and established artists who had rarely exhibited together,"13 such as Latifa Toujani (b.1948), Malika Agueznay (b.1934), Suad al-Attar (b. 1942), Chaïbia (1929–2004), Saloua Raouda Choucair (1916–2017), Wafika Sultan Saif al-Essa (b.1952), Huguette Caland (1931–2019), and Samira Badran (b.1954), among others.

Many of the participating artists entered the exhibition with established artistic trajectories shaped by distinct national contexts, intellectual circles, and professional networks. In some cases, they had already demonstrated a longstanding engagement with questions of gender, cultural identity, and political commitment. For instance, artist and activist Latifa Toujani held a central place within Morocco's post-independence artistic milieu; Saloua Raouda Choucair had a decades-long engagement with activism and abstraction; Huguette Caland was known for her challenge to gender and for founding INAASH: Association for the Development of the Palestinian Camps (est. 1969); and Vera Tamari was deeply involved in Palestinian artistic and educational life, including The League of Palestinian Artists (est. 1973). All of these engagements predated the exhibition by a decade or more. The exhibition created an opportunity for key members entangled in predominantly separate networks to intersect, and included a wide range of artistic approaches, from abstract and figurative works to calligraphy, landscape painting, and artworks addressing folklore, heritage, and social and family life.

As part of the planned celebrations marking the 12th anniversary of the 17 July 1968 Ba'athist Coup, the exhibition helped link the exhibition to narratives of national progress and Pan-Arab unity. Arab art movements that had previously been relatively isolated experienced increased circulation and regional exchange during the 1970s (Shabout 2008, 30): the Baghdad exhibition can be seen as the culmination of these interactions, as well as a way to situate dispersed artistic movements within the political and cultural developments of an Iraq that, after the coup, had provided unprecedented institutional support for the arts (while consolidating state control over the general cultural production). Wjdan Ali (1994, 90) writes:

Subsequently, several exhibitions of Iraqi art were presented in other Arab cities, including Cairo, Damascus, Rabat and Beirut. As official state patronage increased, the National Museum of Modern Art multiplied its acquisitions of local artworks and started participating in international biennials and exhibitions. Group exhibitions became more frequent, especially those offered in conjunction with national festivities and important political events. Thus, for several decades, Iraqi artists have benefitted from their government's support, which helped them revive a vibrant modern art movement in their country.

Thus, the exhibition reflected and contributed to a burgeoning regional exchange while also situating women artists from the MENA region within the state-sponsored framework of Pan-Arab cultural diplomacy. However, while the Ba'athist state instrumentalised cultural production and gender representation as part of its broader political project, the exhibition also created conditions for artistic encounters that exceeded these institutional objectives. Photographic documentation and the artists’ own recollections indicate that the exhibition functioned as a moment of mutual artistic recognition. Its significance lies less in whether it created a permanent network and more in how it made visible a geographically diverse community of Arab women artists and created a temporary space for dialogue.

Exhibition Statement and Guide

The exhibition statement aligned with the regime’s mobilisation of both the language of Pan-Arab unity and anti-colonial resistance. Within this framing, women artists were represented less as individual practitioners than as symbolic representatives of political ideals, including national progress and anti-imperialist struggle. The introductory text in the exhibition catalogue did not function solely as a showcase for artistic creation and situated histories but was presented as a broader cultural manifestation, and is thus revelatory of how the event was framed through intertwined discourses of Arab unity and state-sponsored women's mobilisation. The statement reads:

It is a just response of every authentic Arabian to share his brothers and sisters in their struggling march that, aiming to fulfil the greatest target, serving humanity in general. The invitation of the General Federation of Iraqi Women (GFIW) to the Arab artists, in all the parts of the Arab Homeland and emigration, in order to be the nucleus for a coming unity. And for the first time, trustly, magnanimously, the Arab Women Artists make a wide response to the invitation, in order to express what is hidden in the hearts from great wishes and greatest thoughts."14

This language brings to the fore themes of Arab identity, homeland, and authenticity, positioning women’s artistic labour as integral to liberation. The archival materials demonstrate the reality beyond the official statement, suggesting it was shaped not only by state ideology but also by artistic practices, professional trajectories, and the social relationships of its participants.

The exhibition guide holds witness to this, serving as one of the show’s few surviving documents. It features selected images of the artworks included, portraits of the participating artists, and short biographical notes. While the guide documents the participants’ diversity, it offers little discussion of the artworks themselves or of the curatorial direction. "15 Primarily registering the participating artists through an overview of political participation. It frames Arab women’s artistic production as evidence of the state’s commitment to Pan-Arab unity, cultural progress, and women’s public participation. This reveals the exhibition’s regional ambition by bringing together artists from across the Arab world.

2.2 Photos from Baghdad: A Closer Look 

The significance of how the exhibition brought together a large group of women artists is further illuminated by a series of photographs produced by the GFIW—as indicated by a stamp that reads, ‘Media Secretary, the Central Photography Department’—that are preserved in the Saloua Raouda Choucair archive, contained in an envelope labelled ‘Images from Baghdad’. Documenting not only the event but its accompanying social activities and informal gatherings,"16 these photographs shift the focus away from one aspect of the exhibition, revealing the underlying social infrastructure: group activities, events, and the informal socialising that occurred alongside the official programme. This documentation shows the ways in which the exhibition functioned as more than a conventional show; it also operated as a form of cultural diplomacy, echoing an already existing pan-Arab exhibition strategies employed in the region. Viewed alongside the exhibition guide and interpreted through the artists’ own recollections, these ‘official’ photographs indicate dimensions of the exhibition that remain invisible.

In an interview conducted in Amman in December 2024, artist Samira Badran (b. 1954), provided a detailed account of her participation in the exhibition."17 Badran, who at the time, was specialising in painting and etching at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts (The Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze) (1978–1982), contributed two artworks, including a large oil painting (220 x 100 cm) depicting life under Israeli occupation and the violence endured by Palestinians. She described the pressure several participating artists felt, including tensions around the event's fixed structure during their visits to various Iraqi cities. Yet, Badran also recalled moments of genuine admiration and solidarity between the artists, reflecting the ambivalence and negotiated nature of their participation: Badran remembers the presence of prominent artists such as the Attar sisters, and also conversations with Choucair, where she described the conditions under which she produced work during the Lebanese Civil War, sometimes by candlelight, which left a deep impression on her. Participants travelled extensively throughout Iraq, visiting museums and heritage sites and attending official events. She remembered receiving a traditional dress and a commemorative medal. The award ceremony itself was marked by the anticipated but ultimately absent presence of Saddam Hussein himself.

Another perspective is provided by artist Batool Al-Fekaiki (b.1941), who not only participated in the exhibition but also played a pivotal role in guiding the Moroccan delegation. She participated in the tour of exhibitions and heritage sites, and continued her exchange with participants after the event, maintaining contact with artists such as Chaibia, whom she later visited at her studio in Rabat."18 In her public online conversation, Al-Fekaiki recounted their visit to Dar al-Azia al-Iraqi (the Iraqi House of Fashion), where Feryal al-Kilidar, a designer and the institution’s director, distributed Hashemite dresses, a traditional Iraqi dress, to the visiting artists (see figure 1). Al-Fekaiki exhibited an artwork titled Youm AL Khalq (the Day of Creation), c. 1978-79, characteristic of her imaginary and symbolic style. The painting depicts an explosion under a dark sky, with a centrally positioned sun-like shape that is encircled by tree trunks, roots, and motifs resembling eyes.

These recollections suggest that artistic participation was experienced as neither simple endorsement nor outright resistance; instead, these sources point to a space of negotiated openness. The quieter, informal moments, preserved in both memory and image, offer insights into the ways in which meaningful encounters developed despite the broader institutional conditions."19

3. Institutional Framework: The GFIW

The First National Exhibition for Arab Women Artists developed within the framework of the GFIW, a state organisation that facilitated women's cultural participation while simultaneously instrumentalising it by connecting this participation with the ideological framework of the Ba'ath regime. Understanding this tension is essential to understanding the exhibition itself. At the same time, the exhibition created opportunities for artistic encounters between women artists from across the Arab world that exceeded the intentions of its organisers. This tension makes the exhibition an important case through which to consider both the possibilities and the limitations of state feminism (understood here as state-led efforts to promote women's rights and visibility as part of a broader modernisation project).

An important account of the GFIW is provided by Elizabeth Fernea in her book In Search of Islamic Feminism: One Woman's Global Journey (1998), which revisits Iraq after more than three decades of engagement with women's lives in the country. Fernea describes the political transition from the revolutionary period to life under the new regime, noting that Iraq had one of the most highly educated female populations in the region at the time."21 According to Fernea, the Ba'athists ‘proclaimed themselves true socialists, who saw women as an important and crucial element in the formation of an independent secular state’ (Fernea 1998, 295). This situates women's advancement in Iraq within a broader project of state-building rather than the outcome of a liberation movement reminiscent of Western feminism."22 Founded in 1969 by Nawal Hilmi, Manal Younis, and Ramizia Al Khairon, the GFIW played a central but deeply ambivalent role in shaping the landscape of women’s cultural work in Iraq. In the following years, it expanded its activities and reach, establishing the Arts Committee, a women’s museum, and the Iraqi House of Arts and Crafts (Fernea 1998, 325-7). The federation’s founding mandate was overtly political and tasked the organization with mobilising Iraqi women for state-building and to serve as evidence of the Ba'ath regime’s commitment to national progress, socialist values, and pan-Arab unity (Fernea 1998, 292-4). According to Fernea and Al-Ali (2012), the GFIW positioned itself as a progressive force and by the early 1990s claimed over a million and a half members.23 This progress, however, was inseparable from the political project that produced it. The federation was a product of the party’s top-down vision of modernisation and its gender policies shifted with the regime’s changing political priorities—its rhetoric promoted women's roles in the family and nation, the struggle against imperialism, and the creation of a secular legal order while simultaneously instrumentalising women's advancement in the service of regime interests and the consolidation of Ba'athist power (Fernea 1998, 295-320; Al-Ali 2012).

Within this context, the organisation of The First National Art Exhibition for Arab Women Artists exemplifies the productive yet unstable tension between state-directed spectacle and the unpredictable outcomes of cultural encounter. The federation’s sponsorship enabled this gathering of artists from across the region, the staging of elaborate ceremonies, and the publication of an official narrative of unity and progress. For the organisers, the exhibition clearly functioned as a vehicle for Pan-Arab political messaging. The GFIW’s role should therefore be understood not as contradictory but characteristic of state feminism in Ba'athist Iraq. T​ ​he artworks and the artists’ own experiences themselves remain irreducible to ideological claims made on their behalf, inviting readings that transcend the official narrative through which they were presented.

References

1. Upper row (right to left): Daad Khalaf Al-Tall, Jordan (b.1934); Samia Zarou, Palestine (1938–2026); Khadija Bouslam, Morocco; Hayat Al-Sunni, Morocco; Lamia Numan Najim, Iraq (b.1956); Latif Nassif Jassim, Iraq (1941–2021); Chaïbia Talal, Morocco (1929–2004); Latifa Toujani, Morocco (b.1947/48); Unknown; Saloua Raouda Choucair, Lebanon (1916–2017); Vera Tamari, Palestine (b.1945) or Nadia Al Kadrani, Egypt (author to verify); Unknown; Hababa Al Sabti, Morocco (b.1945); Nazha Shehab Al Khalifa, Iraq. Lower row (right to left): Mona Said/Shams Al Din (author to verify); 16. Rajiha al-Qudsi, Iraq (b.1951) or Saud al-Attar, Iraq (b.1942); 17. Elsie Huri, Lebanon; Malika Agueznay, Morocco (b.1934); Afaf Zurayk, Lebanon (b.1948); Samira Badran, Palestine (b.1954); Batool AlFekaiki, Iraq (b.1941); Dunya Al-Zoubi, Jordan (b.1956); Siham Al-Shukra, Iraq (b.1938) or Suha Sharif, Iraq; Maliha Hakim, Iraq; Unknown. Identification of those depicted is by the author, based on comparison with the exhibition guide, archival material, and where possible, recent consultation with participating artists . Several figures remain tentatively identified and are thus subject to further verification.
2. A return visit in 2023 allowed the research to become more grounded. While Saloua Choucair herself is normally recognised as a as an abstractionist rather than a feminist or activist in the conventional sense, as reflected in her writings (Kirsten Scheid, ‘Toward a Material Modernism: Introduction to S. R. Choucair’s “How the Arab Understood Visual Art”’, ARTMargins 4, no. 1 [2015]: 102-18), her archive suggests a more complex set of artistic relationships than acknowledged by existing scholarship. Her archive also invites consideration of her relationship with her sister Anissa Rawda Najjar (1913–2016), a prominent women’s rights activist and founder of the Village Welfare Society (Jamʿiyyat Inʿash al-Qarya). For further discussion, see: Mona Najjar Halabi, comp., Anissa Rawda Najjar: Memories, Achievements, Recommendations (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 2022), 110-120; Abu Dhabi Art, ‘Saloua Raouda Choucair & Mahmoud Hammad – Preserving a Legacy: Custodians of Arab Art’, discussion with Hala Choucair, Lubna Hammad, and Ala Younis. YouTube video, December 12, 2022., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fv--2v70MM&t=3317s. (Accessed 25.06.2026); Lina Ramadan, ‘Moments of Return in the Work of Yto Barrada, Mohamed Bourouissa and Iman Issa,’ in Avant-Garde and Liberation: Contemporary Art and Decolonial Modernism, ed. Christian Kravagna (Vienna: Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, 2024), 156-57.
3. The General Federation of Iraqi Women (GFIW) was established on 4 March 1969 by Nawal Hilmi, Ramizia Al Khairon, and Manal Younes, who served as its president. For further information, see: Wafa Stephan, ‘The General Federation of Iraqi Women’, Al-Raida 9, no. 34, Equality, Development and Peace (November 1985): 3-4, https://alraidajournal.lau.edu.lb/images/issue034-page003.pdf. Also, https://archive.org/details/gfiw-a-practical-translation-to-the-objectives-of-the-revolution/mode/2up (Accessed 25.06.2026).
4. Nuri Al-Rawi, Reflections on Modern Iraqi Art, (Directorate of Arts and Popular Culture, Ministry of Guidance, Baghdad), 1962; Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, The Roots of Contemporary Iraqi Art (Baghdad: Arab Printing House, 1986).
5. Phebe Marr and Ibrahim Al-Marashi, The Modern History of Iraq, 4th ed. (Boulder: Westview Press, 2017)
6. Nada Shabout, ‘Images and Status: Visualizing Iraqi Women’, in Muslim Women in War and Crisis: Representation and Reality, ed. Faegheh Shirazi (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), 150-51.
7. A combination of Arab nationalism, Pan-Arabism, and anti-imperialist sentiment.
8. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Iraq was assigned to the British mandate under the Sykes-Picot Agreement until 1932, when the Kingdom of Iraq was established. The 14 July Revolution in 1958, where the Hashemite monarchy was overthrown by military officers who declared Iraq a republic, marked a turning point in the country’s development. Subsequent decades were marked by political upheaval, with the Ba'ath Party staging a coup in 1963 and then subsequently losing power, only to regain it in 1968. Iraq’s modern history is also deeply intertwined with military conflict, including the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), the invasion of Kuwait and ensuing Gulf War (1990–1991), and the Second Gulf War that led to Saddam’s fall from power.
9. Mühendishane-i Berrî-i Hümâyun (Imperial School of Military Engineering), Hasköy, Constantinople.
10. See Wijdan Ali, ‘Modern Arab Art: An Overview’, in Forces of Change: Artists of the Arab World, ed. Salwa Mikdadi Nashashibi (Washington, D.C.: International Council for Women in the Arts and National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1994), 87-88; Nada M. Shabout, Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007), 20; Anneka Lenssen, ‘Baghdad Kept on Working: Painting and Propaganda during the British Occupation of Iraq, 1941–45’, Getty Research Journal, no. 19 (2024): 92-121.
11. See her declaration: Madiha Umar, ‘Arabic Calligraphy: An Inspiring Element in Abstract Art (1949–50)’, in Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents, ed. Anneka Lenssen, Sarah Rogers, and Nada Shabout (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2018), 139-42.
12. Layla al-Attar was appointed as the director of the Center for National Art (Iraqi Museum of Modern Art) in 1985, a position she maintained until her death in 1993.
13. Artists were represented from the following countries: Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Qatar, and Tunisia.
14. The statement was originally featured in Arabic, with English translation. However, this version is edited by the Encyclopaedia translator for clarity.
15. The record contains several inconsistencies. Information regarding the number of exhibited artworks is limited, the captions of several artworks remain unknown, there are variations in the spelling of artists' names and the titles of artworks, as well as translation inconsistencies. All of these complicate efforts to trace the featured artworks.
16. These included group excursions, official ceremonies, visits to archaeological landmarks, formal and informal group photographs taken of the participating artists.
17. The photographs in the Choucair archive led to this unexpected interview with Samira, daughter of the well-known illustrator Jamal Badran (1909–1999). It took place during a research visit to Amman. When I showed her one of the photographs, she immediately recognised herself at its centre, at the age of approximately 26. This encounter provided an opportunity to connect the photographic archive to a participant whose vivid recollections animated the record. Further interviews are planned with additional artists who participated in the exhibition including Batool al-Fekaiki. Special thanks to Suha Shoman and Luma Hamdan for facilitating this meeting and also for their support during my fellowship at Darat al-Funun, Amman (2024– 2025).
18. This account derives from an online conversation between Sultan Sooud al-Qassemi and Batool al-Fekaiki that took place on 19 July 2026. Before the conversation, the author corresponded with al-Qassemi regarding al-Fekaiki’s artwork participation in the exhibition. Special thanks to Sultan al-Qassemi for connecting the author with the Amina Agueznay, the daughter of artist Malika Agueznay.
19. Nada Shabout, ‘Iraq. Images and Status: Visualizing Iraqi Women’, in Muslim Women in War and Crisis: Representation and Reality, ed. Faegheh Shirazi (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010).https://muse.jhu.edu/book/821.
20. For further on this, see ‘Solidarity! Transnational Feminisms Then and Now’, https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2023-solidaritElizabeth Fernea provides an important account of the GFIW y-transnational-feminisms-then-and-now-exhibition
21. Fernea, In Search of Islamic Feminism, 292-94.
22. The GFIW remained independent despite coordination between the federation and the long-established Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) and the Iraqi Women's League.