In this 15-minute experience, visitors encounter personal stories of Iraq in the 1970s, as remembered by those who lived there. Through voices and images, Iraq emerges as a space of cultural richness and everyday life, shaped by memory and displacement of its people. The work offers a rare perspective on Iraqi history and diaspora experience.
The work resonates on multiple levels: through Al-Rawi’s layered cultural identity, which echoes Brussels’ plurality of identities, and through the project’s sensitive engagement with oral and photographic archives as spaces of transmission, participation and remembrance.
Basil Al-Rawi works across photography, moving images, sculpture and digital technologies, exploring memory, identity and archival storytelling. The project was developed as part of his PhD research at the Glasgow School of Art.
House of Memory is part of Ireland’s cultural programme for the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
The photographs and recorded narratives become the material for an expanded photographic moment: an intimate encounter in which you can sit and listen to somebody's story.
I wanted to use VR in a way that resists the mission logic of a video game, so there is no task to complete. There are also no handheld controllers so instead you use your gaze to move through and interact with the space. That also brings attention to the act of looking: how we look matters, and what we look at matters.
The stories bring back things the photograph cannot show: recollection of the scent of citrus trees in a garden, the sound of the bulbul, or the feeling in a moment.
Those details shape the space, and elements of the environment appear or change as the narration unfolds. I'm interested in giving form to the atmosphere of recollection, including its gaps and subjectivity.
I hope that familiarity allows people to connect with the stories, and to reflect on their own relationships with photographs, memory and home.
Basil Al-Rawi brings to life personal stories and photographs from the Iraq Photo Archive by the use of new technologies such as VR. Visitors will discover another face of a country that has suffered from decades of images of wars in the mainstream media, and stereotypes in war video games.
Since 2020, the project led by Basil Al-Rawi invites us to look, listen, and reflect on our own relationships to home and belonging.
Artist have the power to transform our ways of seeing something and bring nuance to general narratives. This is what Basil Al-Rawi does by giving us a chance to see Iraq from a different perspective than the one we are used to hearing.
Biography
Basil Al-Rawi is an Irish-Iraqi visual artist working across photography, moving image, sculpture, and immersive media. His practice engages with archival materials and digital environments to examine how histories are constructed, mediated, and contested through images and technology. Drawing on personal, vernacular and collective archives, he develops works that reconstruct fragmented narratives and challenge dominant representations of West Asia.
Al-Rawi holds a practice-based PhD from The Glasgow School of Art. He has exhibited internationally, including at The Photographers' Gallery, the Lahore Biennale, and the 25th Biennale of Sydney. He is the recipient of multiple Arts Council awards and the inaugural Gibson Travelling Fellowship from Crawford Art Gallery.
Focus on Ireland
As part of Cultúr 2026, Bozar presents Focus on Ireland, a multidisciplinary programme highlighting contemporary Irish artistic practice across music, literature, cinema, performance and digital creation.
Across music, literature, film, and visual culture, Focus on Ireland traces a dynamic and evolving scene. Bringing together established and emerging voices, the programme reflects a culture shaped by collaboration and experimentation. It engages with themes of identity, migration, memory, technology, and human connection, situating Irish artistic production within a broader European dialogue.
