Serwan Baran | Recent Works

Serwan Baran was born in Baghdad in 1968 and is considered part of the “new generation” of Iraqi painters. He has lived through over 40 years of war in his country and was conscripted during conflicts in the 1980s and 1990s. During his time as a soldier and war artist, Baran was obligated to record the victories of the Iraqi army for government propaganda.

He joined the Iraqi military and witnessed the defeat and humiliation. Following the 2003 second Gulf War, he moved to Amman, Jordan, where he stayed for ten years; Baran has been living and working in Beirut since 2013.

Baran is known for his cathartic, gestural paintings that deconstruct his experiences as a soldier in the Iraq army and artist for the Iraqi government. His work became more expressionist when he began addressing his military expertise by deconstructing images of generals in grotesque, figural abstractions. Baran describes this artistic period as an attempt to silence “the nightmare inside me.”

Through concerning himself with the minute details, Baran’s paintings convey a political and human message that is always valid: past, present, and future. His violent and furious brushstrokes express the oppression inflicted on the Iraqi people through war. Baran’s faces are distorted and frequently featureless, a result of brutal torture and oppression.

His paintings center on the turbulent history of his native Iraq. Baran has widely exhibited in the Middle East and North Africa, and in 2019 he was the first solo artist to represent Iraq at the Venice Biennale.