Iraq will take part in the International Architecture Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia for the first time in 2021, with artist Rashad Salim's concept ‘Ark Re-imagined: the Expeditionary Pavilion' (May 20 – Nov. 21). This year also celebrates the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the modern state of Iraq. The pavilion, curated by Safina Projects and produced in collaboration with Community Jameel and CULTURUNNERS as piloti del padiglione (pavilion pilots), goes back to the beginnings of Iraq's architectural legacy, commemorating the vernacular architecture and watercraft of the Tigris-Euphrates river system, and the seminal ‘alphabet of making' from which early architecture began to emerge.

Challenging standardized images of the Ark focused on European boat-building techniques, Salim proposes ‘an Ark of its time and location': an organic, tensile-built framework, its layout extracted from vernacular construction methods and boat types related to the timeframe of the ancient Flood, a rising of sea level around 10,000 years ago that formed the Gulf. Salim's 'expeditionary art' technique explores Iraq's tangible cultural legacy through the theme of Ark. Since 2016, the Ark Re-imagined project has worked with craftsmen in central, southern, and western Iraq to restore and document the last vestiges of traditional boatbuilding, architecture, and craft.

The legacy, which has existed since the beginning of recorded history, has been reduced to the verge of extinction in recent decades due to horrific violence and suffering. The Expeditionary Pavilion connects actively with its setting through outdoor exhibits and digital components, investigating parallels between Venice's delta wetland habitat and diverse boating practices and those of Basra and the Ahwar (marshlands) in southern Iraq. Southern Iraq, like Venice, is now confronting the catastrophic issue of the Anthropocene, a climatic event equivalent to the historical Flood. Ark Re-imagined investigates the transformational phenomena that built human civilization and continues to stay critical to our precarious future to confront the issues of our day.

The project's objective is to assemble resources and people to facilitate cross-cultural communication. “The Ark Re-imagined answers the topic of this year's Biennale Architettura — ‘How will we survive together?' — by using the assembling principle,” says Salim. The Iraq Cultural Health Fund, established by Community Jameel and CULTURUNNERS as part of The Future is Unwritten Artists' Response Fund, offers financial and production aid to artist-led projects that lead to improved mental, social, and environmental health in the aftereffects of COVID-19. The pavilion project has been created in collaboration with the Healing Arts project, which was created under the supervision of the World Health Organization in collaboration with the WHO Foundation as part of the United Nations 75th Anniversary Program (UN75).

In 2020, UN75 formally acknowledged the Ark Reimagined initiative as an example of an artist-led initiative achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“This exhibition and the wider Ark Re-Imagined Project penetrate deep into Iraq's history while confronting present problems, compounded by the pandemic, of trauma, loss of identity, and seclusion,” said George Richards, Director of Community Jameel. The pavilion's manufacturing is co-funded by the ALIPH Foundation, and project research and policy information has also been endorsed by funders such as the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, the Arab Council for the Social Sciences, the Makiya-Kufa Charity, the British Council's Cultural Protection Fund in collaboration with DCMS, and the Nahrein Network. Iraq's Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Antiquities is the project's commissioner. On May 20, TBA21-Academy sponsored a chat with Salim at Ocean Space as the Pavilion's first program in Venice.

Salim is an Iraqi-German artist and multiple disciplines researcher with a special interest in ecology and the history and evolution of technology and culture as expressed in antique boats, vernacular architecture, crafts, and intangible cultural treasures. He was born in Khartoum, Sudan in 1957 to a German mother and an Iraqi artist/diplomat father (Nizar Salim), both were members of the well-known Selim family of painters. He moved frequently from birth, spending his infancy in China, Sweden, and Yugoslavia, and spent his formative years (1970-1982) in Iraq, where he enrolled at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad and Saint Martin's in London.

On 1977-78, he had been a crew member on Thor Heyerdahl's Tigris expedition, sailing across the Indian Ocean in a reed boat from Iraq. He stayed in Morocco and Yemen in the 1980s and 1990s, where he started working as a sculptor and painter, participated in local cultural heritage, and co-founded cultural organizations. He has artworks in the British Museum and the Aga Khan Collection. From 1998 until 2012, he had been a trustee of iNCiA (International Network of Contemporary Iraqi Artists).

He has been a resident of London, United Kingdom, since 1999, going back to Iraq in 2003, 2013, and on a constant schedule since 2016. Since founding Safina Projects in 2017, he has produced a project of boat and craft workshops, heritage events on the water, research, and capacity-building in the field of Iraqi intangible cultural heritage with funding from the British Council's Cultural Protection Fund, Nahrein Network, and ALIPH Foundation. Open access to riverfront and waterways is a growing topic in his work; to that end, he is assisting in the establishment of a system of locally run youth boat clubs in Iraq. Curator Safina Initiatives is a creative enterprise that strives to preserve and revitalize Iraq's endangered craft history, notably its antique boats, via art and cultural research projects that involve the public in Iraq and throughout the world.

Community Jameel is a worldwide organization that addresses some of the world's most pressing concerns and problems in the domains of education, health, and climate change through a pioneering strategy based on evidence, research, data, and technology.

CULTURUNNERS is an autonomous platform that promotes pluralism, peace-building, and sustainable growth via art through cross-cultural campaigns, exhibitions, films, and live events. It was established at MIT in 2014 and emphasizes artist-led initiatives that shape communities, cultures, and systems.