Iraq: a country in which art and culture once terrified the military regime. Between the military coup of 1963 and the US-led invasion of in 2003, art and artists became the enemies of the state, with creatives and intellectuals striving to reveal the truth.

As artists, writers, filmmakers, painters and thinkers were imprisoned, tortured and killed, the country lost its soul. Some of the ‘lucky’ ones escaped into an unknown exile to survive and continue to create. Through them, a new Iraq was born in exile, establishing a parallel country that spread throughout Europe and around over the world.

This Iraq was nourished by the art, words and films of exiled Iraqis. Their work was shaped by the yearning for the homeland, their sense of belonging and the hope of one day returning, even if it is only to visit the graves of those they had to leave behind.

Voices from Exile brings together four such Iraqi artists who only known home from afar, but continued to live and create as the children of one of world’s oldest civilisation. This exhibition collects work made over a 50-year period, together exploring the alienation and nostalgia of exile through printmaking, photography and film.

Photography by Koutaiba Al Janabi and Yamam Nabeel portrays the transience of a never-ending journey, while Sadiq Toma’s woodcuts imagine the myths of a phantom home. These works on paper freeze a moment, thought or idea in time, and are complimented by documentary films by Samir Jamal Al Din combining personal ephemera and found footage.

The work of these artists is fundamentally humanistic in its approach, collectively representing the antithesis to a culture of violence driven by greed and the desire for uncontrolled power by the ruling elite globally.