Hanoos' Babel: Twenty years of painting to understand human chaos

We are in the studio of an Iraqi painter, one of the best Iraqi painters this Middle Eastern country has produced, who lives in Madrid. We are talking about Hanoos Hanoos.

Hanoos, thank you very much for being with us and for opening the doors of your studio. Tell us, because we are seeing what the Tower of Babel is that you, taking Pieter Brueghel's Tower of Babel as a reference, what is your Tower of Babel? What are you doing? 

This is a project I have been working on for almost 20 years. The idea came from an old friend of mine, a scholar, Juan Luis Montero Fenollós, who is the leading expert in Spain, and even in Europe, on the Tower of Babel. So, from Brueghel to today, there are very few artists who have worked on this theme, which is why, personally, as it is close to my heart, since I was born very close to that place, I felt ‘obliged’ to work on this theme. 

Unlike Brueghel's painting in the 17th century, what I have tried to do is deconstruct the Tower of Babel. For those who are less familiar with the subject, in the Tower of Babel, in Genesis, everyone communicated through the same language until King Nemrut, who wanted to be God, began to build a tower with the intention of reaching the sky. And that's when God sent 72 angels, and that's when each of the workers who were working spoke a different language. Then comes Babel. And from then on, they went to live, supposedly all over the world. That's the story of the Tower of Babel. 

Once this has been explained and understood, in the project, I first make a sketch, which is very hard work, mostly on the computer and so on, and apart from that, I have also researched everything I can on a theoretical level and so on. and the work, my work is very complex, it takes a long time to see it, because I am very obsessed with literature, I have always been interested in work that is wounded, where you see images that are born, die, go away, come back. By the way, this work is not yet finished, but you can see some fragments, you can already see the people, the kingdom of Nemrut... 

The aim is to capture the viewer's gaze, to then narrate the story as I believe it to have been, because we don't know whether the Tower of Babel existed or not, it is simply mentioned in Genesis, and I think it is also a very fascinating subject from many points of view, for many reasons, not because of the religious aspect, but also because of our existence, where we have come from and so on. 

So the work, contrary to what Brueghel says, is, let's say, destruction, when God ordered the tower to be destroyed, it is not expulsion, which is why people are moving around, falling down, up... And then what interests me most is that it also has a language, a personal language if you like, because when an artist produces a work, it is also very important that their own voice can be heard, because that is part of the authority of the work, whether it is good or bad or average. 

What message are you trying to convey with this work? 

The message. A little bit of everything that is happening to us today, everything that is order, disorder, life itself, how man has been rebellious since the beginning, it is that rebellion that shapes our history, not exactly the message itself, but it also represents an event that happened and that I want to present in a way, just as a historian talks about the Tower of Babel, he can talk about what he believes or thinks, so as a visual artist, I also try to do something about that theme, so that the viewer, because now I am in front of you telling you something about my work, but otherwise, the viewer on their own, can, when they see the work, enrich their view, which is what it aims to do. The main message is to enrich people's views on things. 

Do you think that through painting, human beings can reflect, not only human beings, but also leaders? 

It's an artistic work, but also a social one. Yes, I think so, because painting is an important tool, just like music, literature and architecture, and I believe that we are providing a more autonomous view of things through painting. 

So I think so, of course. Painting is very necessary to give meaning to our lives, what we do, where we come from and where we are going. It's also true that it's a slightly more closed language, it can be autonomous, which is what I try to achieve, that it's not so closed, so when I work, I always try to think a little about my audience so that my aesthetic ideas can reach them, so I make an effort, I make a lot of effort so that they can understand me, it's not that I do things for my audience. 

You've brought us another piece here. How many pieces make up the Tower of Babel project? 

I've been working on it for over 20 years. I've got almost 54 now, including large and small pieces. It's a project I've never thought of giving up because, from Brueghel, alias 'he old man', to the present day, there isn't a single artist, especially a contemporary one, who has worked on this theme. 

Can you explain what each part of this painting means? Can you see the Tower in the centre? 

Yes, the Tower is what you see in the centre of the work. What you can see is how, after the call of the 72 angels, there is a rupture caused by God who wants to destroy the Tower, which generates chaos, and that is why all the elements around the structure represent disorder and destruction. 

The Tower of Babel was a religious space, but there were other towers, which is why some are intact in the painting and others are broken. The idea is that when the viewer stands in front of the painting, they begin to draw their own conclusions. 

I think that with the space or the first image I present, more obviously alongside the title, the viewer can already start to think. In any case, I don't think my work is abstract, that you can't see it, but I believe the figures are there. It's a figurative work, although you can't see the images very clearly, because you can't say everything, just like in literature. 

What are you hoping to achieve with this work? In a museum? Do you have any contacts with museums? Have you been able to sell any? Because, well, painters are artists, but you also have to earn a living and be able to sell your work in order to have a normal life, right?

Yes, I have several works on this theme in various museums in Spain and I am now in contact with other museums to see if they would like to have them, because I am very interested in the work remaining there.

In Spain, in all humility, I think it has had some success, because there are no contemporary artists since Brueghel who work on this theme, which is also a shared history of Christianity, Judaism and even Islam, not so much, but it does form part of the collective world consciousness.

At the same time, you are working on an important commission from your country, from the Iraqi government. Tell us about it. 

Well, this work is about a massacre that took place in Iraq in 2014, where 1,700 cadets were murdered in one day by ISIS when they entered Iraq via Mosul and elsewhere, and the Iraqi state commemorates it every year. This is why I was commissioned to create the work, which I spent more than two months researching. The work consists of 24 portraits measuring 5 metres by 3 metres.

Some of these pieces are already finished, aren't they? 

Yes, I have several, including piece number 24, which shows ISIS killing the cadets. It's a very harsh work, to be honest. I have to say that I went overboard with this piece. I worked with the same colours that Goya used in his work 3rd of May, which he painted in 1814, and this one was done in 2014, so there is a 200-year difference, and I wanted to make a link between the West, where I live, and Goya and, humbly, as a painter of Arab origin, even though I have been in Spain for many years, to make a small historical connection between the two events of 200 years ago and, unfortunately, the fact that human beings are still the same, they have remained the same since Goya painted his work until today, we are still a bit the same. We continue to kill each other in a ruthless manner. 

The work will go directly to the Iraqi Parliament. I know that the Iraqi Prime Minister is aware of the situation and they are waiting to take it there. This makes me extremely proud. 

To put it in context for readers, here we have another work depicting the mothers of those who were murdered, right? 

Yes, those are the mothers, who knew nothing about their children. Many mothers go every year to the Parliament to protest with photos of the victims because they want to know where their children have gone, because many mass graves were made when they were killed, and many of them were even buried alive.  

But it wasn't just these people who were killed. ISIS killed people in all the surrounding villages, taking the lives of hundreds of young people who were murdered without knowing why they had been chosen.  

I really had a hard time doing it. It's a work that even my painter friends and acquaintances liked, and it was also well received there. It's an academic work. I have always liked to represent what a photographer does through their camera because I have always liked the viewer to capture the reality of the moment. 

I love novels and essays because they narrate an event, but they don't leave it completely finished, as if it were a police story, but rather the viewer lives with the work. 

Your work represents the memory of a people who cannot forget and who have to overcome the problems of violence they have experienced, and you do this from the point of view of an artist, but an artist with social content and commitment. 

That's true, although I should point out that this is not my first social work. The first painting of this style is in Baghdad after it was acquired by the American University of Baghdad. 

It is a painting that I finished 18 years ago, in 2007. It is a work that represents the arrival of the Americans in Iraq. It is a work that has a meaning of protest against that event. I was inspired by Guernica, and it is because of that painting that I used earthy colours from the area, from the desert, with brown ochre colours and so on. 

It was because of this work that I began my passion for social works. Currently, I want to paint and create on various social issues that have happened in Iraq, and I am interested in making the work provocative, although it is also true that I am a reader of poetry, and I also deal with things from my own life, so I don't want to be just a social painter. 

Hanoos, thank you very much for showing us the work you are doing and also for doing it, because I insist that culture, from the artistic to the social, will help your country, Iraq, and here in Spain, to overcome any kind of radicalism and any kind of violence.