Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1966 Kirkuk, Iraq

Year of Migration to the UK: 1980

Biography

Artist Jananne Al-Ani was born to an Iraqi father and an Irish mother in Kirkuk, Iraq in 1966. With the onset of the Iran-Iraq war, she immigrated to the UK in 1980, together with her mother and three sisters, while her father remained in Iraq. Al-Ani first enrolled at the Byam Shaw School of Art, London, graduating in 1989, followed by a BA in Arabic at the University of Westminster in 1995, and an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in 1997.

Initially trained as a painter, her oeuvre gradually expanded to include photography, audiovisual and video installations, with an increasing incorporation of digital technologies. Her practice is based on a documentation process, mixing personal recollections with official records and an emphasis on the themes relating to the Middle East. A significant focus is the critical examination of the fetishisation of the veiled body in Orientalist painting and photography, while her earlier works interrogate the representation of the female form in the history of western art. The media coverage of the 1991 Gulf War, particularly its emphasis on aerial and satellite imagery of depopulated landscapes, had a profound impact on her artistic direction, leading her to reassess Orientalist representations and the ways in which fantasies surrounding the body and the Middle Eastern landscape were constructed in these works. Al-Ani began to conceptualise the body as a contested space, reflecting the duality of her identity as both an Iraqi and an Irish woman, navigating the often conflicting spheres of East and West. This dual identity is intricately woven into her exploration of the female body, including her own, those of other women, and particularly those of her sisters and mother. Her early multi-screen video installations, featuring members of her immediate family, explore the dynamics of testimony and documentary traditions, contrasting intimate recollections of absence and loss with official historical narratives.

Al-Ani has held many exhibitions in the UK and internationally. In London she has had solo shows, including at the Imperial War Museum (1999) and Tate Britain (2005), and her work featured in Women War Artists, Imperial War Museum (2011). Alongside her exhibition profile, she has pursued an ongoing Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project, The Aesthetics of Disappearance: A Land Without People, which has spanned more than a decade. It examines the disappearance of the body within contested landscapes, critically investigating the relationship between photography and aerial surveillance technologies in 20th-century warfare, as well as their broader impact on disciplines such as art and archaeology. The project has also looked at enduring Orientalist fantasies and depictions of the Middle East in western media, including the BBC. In 2014, she held a solo exhibition at the Hayward Project Space on the Southbank, titled Excavations, in which she explored the enduring 19th-century Orientalist perspective still shaping the Western perception of the contemporary Middle East. Via film and installation, she investigated historical traces visible only from aerial footage (the aerial perspective is central in much of her work), using views captured by drones and satellites. The past and the present were inextricably linked in the exhibition, as the artist searched for evidence of human activity in the moments before the landscape becomes depopulated. In her ambitious 2022 moving image work, Timelines, shown at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne, Al-Ani explored the detailed surface of a highly decorated brass tray from Iraq, from the V&A Collection, depicting Armistice Day, 1918, in the Iraqi town of al-Hindiyyah. Scenes of refugees gathering on the streets, the aftermath of a brutal murder, armed men blending into the throngs of people, and a pervasive sense of tension: these haunting images, which have tragically recurred throughout Iraq's history, are permanently captured on a decorative object. The work is further enriched by interviews with her mother, who reflects on personal experiences of growing up in the UK as the child of Irish immigrants and living in Iraq during periods of intense social and political change. Timelines was exhibited alongside Bringing to Light: Jananne Al-Ani Curates the Towner Collection.

Al-Ani has been recognised with several awards, including first prize for photography in the South Bank Show (1991), John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award (1996), East International Award (2000), and the Abraaj Capital Art Prize (2011). In addition to her art practice and teaching, she also co-curated exhibitions, including: Fair Play in Nottingham in 2001–02 and Veil in Liverpool and Stockholm in 2003–04. Jananne Al-Ani lives and works in London. In the UK public domain, her work is held in the Arts Council Collection, Tate and the V&A.