“The mirage is experienced here as an obsessive-compulsive reenactment of a particular imaginary, one that induces pleasure by distancing itself from the real.”

Publication: “Baghdad Modernism: Duplicity of Mirages and a Crisis of History,” WTD, Emergent/The Iraq Issue 03 (March 2013).

Keywords: exhibition, review, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Josep Lluís Sert, Alvar and Aino Aalto, Robert Venturi, Gio Ponti, Rifat Chadirji, Mohamed Makiya, Ellen Jawdat, Nizar Jawdat, Hisham Munir, exhibition, review, architect, architecture, design, buildings, urbanism, planning, development, modernization, modernism, modern, oil, petrol, society, culture, politics, art, opera, theater, post-WWII, 20th century, history, Baghdad, Iraq, Southwest Asia (”Middle East”), Arab world

Image: Amin Alsaden