Iraqi expressionist painter Vian Sora was born in Baghdad in 1976. Prior to the war, she spent endless days at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad and at archaeological sites throughout Iraq.

Her paintings in this exhibition bridge the ancient and modern Iraq by using a mixture of materials including solids and oils that creates a near-leather texture for engraving and coloring. She creates on canvas a present-day interpretation of the walls of long ago, on which were engraved the historical record of one civilization after another.

To Sora, the history and heritage of Mesopotamia are now seemingly forgotten by those in distant lands, and she seeks to keep alive the colors, shapes, shadows and symbols of a culture that is critical for all humanity.

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