Ali Eyal Gives Testimony

""We were kids, and I didn't understand that gesture from her," Eyal said in an interview with Hyperallergic, "but now it's resonating. Sometimes you need time to understand simple gestures. It takes years to detect them." This reflection captures how childhood experiences gain meaning only through adult perspective and temporal distance."

""I was nine years old, and I felt like I lost that childhood," the Whitney Biennial artist told Hyperallergic, reflecting on the US's war in Iraq, the disappearance of his father, and the art he makes to process. This statement encapsulates the profound impact of geopolitical conflict on individual development and creative expression."

"The scene reads as a nightmare, with dream logic darkening an innocent atmosphere. The Ferris wheel's cars have been replaced by heads, seemingly impaled by steel spokes. An armed guard keeps an eye on the queue of grotesque fairgoers. This visual transformation demonstrates how trauma distorts memory and childhood joy into horror."

Ali Eyal, a Whitney Biennial artist, creates work rooted in his experience as a nine-year-old during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. His mother took him to an amusement park in Baghdad, urging him to remember the city's peaceful state before airstrikes began days later. This formative memory inspired his oil painting "Look Where I Took You," which reimagines the Ferris wheel with grotesque imagery: heads impaled by spokes, armed guards, and a figure in a Ghostface mask representing American troops. Eyal depicts himself as a child observing the scene blankly, unable to comprehend the horrors. His multidisciplinary practice across painting, drawing, installation, and video explores themes of trauma, grief, and lost innocence stemming from war.

Read at Hyperallergic