Silkscreen print for the Babylon International Festival

Description:

This striking multicolored silkscreen plays with registers of both Latin and Arabic characters to create an advertisement for the Babylon International Festival. Inaugurated in Iraq in 1987, the festival was conceived as a major music, dance, and theater event that would, in part, distract from an ongoing war between Iran and Iraq. The bold use of gold reads as a ziggurat that recedes into the turquoise sky, flanking a pop art depiction of antiquity. Al-Nasiri was running a specialty print studio of his own in the 1980s, and the design may well be his.

Attribution:

Unknown, possibly Rafa al-Nasiri

Date:

1987

Source:

Original from UC Berkeley Library collection