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White Undershirts as a Symbol of Passivity

When the American troops entered Baghdad in the first week of April, 2003, during the American invasion; the Iraqi people were in a quandary; they didn’t know how to react, or how they would manage their daily life while the enemy tanks were in the streets. They had to go outside to buy food and continue their regular life.
It was a big dilemma being face to face with the invaders. In order to do that, they had to show that they succumbed and would not attack the troops. To do so, some Iraqi people used white clothes, white keffiyeh, white shmagh*, while the majority used their undershirts to show passivity.

The installation consists of many white undershirts which hang on wooden sticks, and they are flitting. Furthermore, the long vertical expressionist paintings show Iraqi men with neither undershirts nor Keffiyehs. It’s a reminiscence of those scary and bitter days.