The Iraqi-American artist unveils her inner world, inviting us to consider the themes and stories hidden in her captivating and vibrant paintings, where nothing is quite as it seems.
Canvas: You’re a first-generation immigrant to the United States, but you grew up in Baghdad?
Vian Sora: I was born in Baghdad in 1976 and left after the 2003 invasion. We travelled a lot to avoid the heavy bombing during the Iraqi-Iranian war. My parents often took us to Europe or neighbouring countries.
Has your view on your years spent in Iraq changed since being in the US?
My background is unavoidable in my work. The esoteric nature of my practice is rooted in the wars, the beauty, the tragedy, and in the cultural and artistic nurturing which surrounded me in Iraq. Fifteen years of being a first-generation immigrant in the US is also heavily present.
How do you represent themes of war and displacement in your work?
I feel war and displacement in my body. My first displacement was within my country. I was not accepted as a Kurdish woman who painted landscapes with women in them. That’s how I represented the displacement I felt then, but now my work has completely shifted to these emotional, imaginary landscapes. The older I get, the more I feel displaced, though I have found a way to cultivate these scenes around collective consciousness.
When preparing for a new painting, do you have a vision of what you’re going to put onto a canvas or does it take shape as you go along?
I think of myself as a vessel, especially in the first week of creation. Sometimes I do simple sketches, after which the colour pours out of me, and intuition works with intention. Accidents are the most beautiful thing to happen, because that’s when we’re being vulnerable. The textures are the result of a fight between me and the work, there’s a tension between us. It’s very emotional but also cathartic. The painting phase is like a ritual, I apply 50 to 100 layers of oil, in a metaphor for the layers of Earth, emotions and meaning.
Image courtesy of the artist and The Third Line, Dubai
What does the abstraction in your painting do for complex psychological states such as displacement or decay and trauma?
I feel my work is mostly gestural because the bodies are always there. My biggest challenges in life were borders, physically and emotionally. The way to break them in the work is to keep an illusion of something defined. That’s the concept of push-and-pull. About 12 years ago my work dealt directly with trauma, so it’s often in the background.
What do paintings that depict gardens and war zones, like End of Hostilities and Enkido (both 2019), mean to you?
The concept of the garden has been present since the beginning of time for artists. My gardens are scary, like a dream scene, but also very personal. I often work from a dream state, which came later to me: the bodies became limbs of trees or winged creatures. I’m inspired by childhood memories of my grandmother’s front garden in Baghdad, which was enclosed in shady grapevines because of the heat, had pomegranates, decaying fountains, parrots and all these corners. It was fascinating but also terrifying. Nature always feels like the answer in some way. In any violent situation, your escape is not necessarily just to art, but to nature.
Are we talking about the human condition with these imagined landscapes?
The human condition is what concerns me the most. I see my work as futuristic, and imagine it after everything is gone and things are coming back to life after destruction. This Earth was made this way. Oil cursed my country, but blessed others. Oil, which is made from matter, crushed bones, bodies, dinosaurs, is the basis of Earth. When we die, we’re going to be part of that inevitable regrowth. It’s like a basketweave, because this is how I think of life. It’s a million dimensions.
There is an oozing quality in some of your work, such as Unveiled (2022). It could be interpreted as blood or oil. Is this conscious and what are you representing?
I made that work when they killed Mahsa Amini, which is why there is the elevated body, like she’s lifted by branches. I was thinking of her as a Kurdish woman, of women being brutalised by men, and about oil and power in Iran. For Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, I created a 40-feet painting commission called Abzu from oil paint made from the toxic waste of the Ohio River mixed with pigments. It’s a metaphor: what was once toxic is now safe to use. Water carries trauma, but oil carries it more deeply. It’s literally made from the physical matter of historical events.
Are there particular colours that you go back to because of the meaning that they hold?
The palette changes are a direct effect of changing terrain. But there is always that very bright yellow. In Iraq, the uranium in the missiles we were bombed with created incredibly vivid sunsets, in addition to many cancers. Then the green shield around Baghdad was burned in 2003, which created dust sandstorms. In Türkiye, then Dubai, they were doing the opposite: planting and bringing in birds. Then, the part of America where I live is incredibly green. My internal terrain also changed with surgeries that I had. My intuition and insight got stronger, the work became free, borders were broken. Those neon colours are directly connected to what’s happening to me now.
Are you reaching for something that’s intangible when you’re creating?
My art is my imprint on this Earth, and it’s in a constant fight with technology. But art will always survive. It’s connected to the human soul, because it’s the words we can’t speak.
It might look beautiful, but there is also an element of danger. When I worked with the Associated Press in Baghdad between 2003 and 2006, I was first on the scene with the crews after a car bombing. There were all these body parts which started appearing in my work, like wildflowers in Cobra Lily. I want people to feel beauty, not to be scared.
In your Third Line exhibition, House of Pearls, the pearl features heavily. Is this the direction your practice is moving in?
I think so. Dubai was a refuge for me and my family when we escaped Iraq: the stability in that city, versus the instability in my country, led me to think about caustic cycles and the pearl as a metaphor. Even now, there is war, stability, life and death, beauty and destruction in the region. My work has all these dichotomies in it as well. I couldn’t work for several years when I came to America, but now I’m very confident in my practice. When you look at your work and you’re proud of it, that’s hope. It’s approaching the sublime in real life.
This interview first appeared in Canvas 115: On The Wild Side
