TARKIB

TARKIB is an institution for the production and presentation of contemporary art, where the pressing questions of our time can be openly formulated and discussed. TARKIB Baghdad Contemporary Arts Institute was founded as an independent artists group on the initiative of emerging Iraqi artists in 2015. Its members are coming from different arts fields: visual art, performing art, interior design, graphic design, photography, film, scenography, music, literature and journalism. Additionally, TARKIB is open to all who wants to make a change. TARKIB’s focus is directed to empowering the youth, especially women and to artworks that form a boundary between art and everyday life, explore new socio-cultural spaces, work interdisciplinary and interactive. As an independent institution for contemporary art TARKIB has a high degree of flexibility in creating its programs and addressing its audience. It is resource both for the people and members who make active use of it, and for those who participate in it as visitors. In 2015 we started with TARKIB Baghdad Contemporary Arts Festival. It is Iraq’s only festival dedicated to new forms of contemporary arts. The heart of the annual festival is a group exhibition with conceptual art by young Iraqi artists and features a program of Iraqi contemporary literature, music, film and theater. As contemporary art is a relatively new phenomenon in Iraq, TARKIB organises workshops with national and international experts in different arts fields. Throughout the year we stage exhibitions where young artists are presented with pieces ranging from site-specific installations to photography, paintings and videoart. TARKIB’s theater productions provide impulses to think differently about theater as arts. MALAK is a book with a collection of poems written by a 20 years old female writer from Najaf. Malak is her assumed name. She writes her poems in secret as certain circles consider poems as to confess a sin. Beginning of this year, we founded the Tarkib Ensemble playing a repertoire of compositions by the Mosulian artist and Tarkib member Ameen Mokdad. Tarkib Ensemble is doing weekly flash mops in different places of the city of Baghdad to activate the cultural life. Through our future-orientated and participatory character we serve to community capacity building and opinion-forming. Through our activities we advance the careers and the creative processes of innovative emerging and mid-career artists. TARKIB is a declaration of intent and an invitation to engage. It unfolds as a space of gathering, in which diverse forms of thinking enhance the understanding of what art can be. Its You Who Can Make A Change!