On Hospitality : Layla Al-Attar and Hotel Al-Rasheed

• In this work, an experiment is carried out that could be called necromancy: a dead person is made to speak to us alive about the past. Necromancy is always an integral part of historiography: using the imagination based on source studies, speculating about the context of history. We meet Layla Al-Attar, an Iraqi artist who talks about a special hotel in Baghdad and the concept of hospitality. Hotel Al-Rasheed was built by order of Saddam Hussein to house the meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Baghdad in 1982. The construction of the hotel was a gigantic Swedish industrial project, today forgotten. It was led by SKANSKA company in Kalmar and more than 1000 companies contributed, many of them small businesses from the province of Småland. But the meeting in Bagdad never took place, the war with Iran broke out.During the Gulf War, Hotel Al-Rasheed became the scene of the world's first televised war. Layla Al-Attar provided the entrance with a mosaic image depicting George Bush's face, as well as the text "George Bush is a criminal". A US missile hit her home in 1993, killing her, along with her husband and housekeeper. The artist had received her invitation from the dictator, she saw the incredible hotel materialize and made her political comment. But she had to pay the price.The work is part of the group exhibition "Här omkring" ("Round here"), Designcentrum, Nybro, 13/05 - 27/08 2023.The exhibition has also been shown at Form/Design Center, Malmö, 22 November 2023 – 14 January 2024.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Konst (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

video essay

necromancy

microhistory

Designarkivet

filmessä

nekromanti

mikrohistoria

Designarkivet

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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