"“Letters To My Father” is the first publication of the work of the artist Salam Atta Sabri (b. 1953 Baghdad).

His work deals directly with the experience of returning to a country dramatically changed by conflict. Atta Sabri kept all of his works of draughtsmanship (some 300 drawings) out of the public eye until exhibiting a selection of these ‘Letters from Baghdad’ at the Iraq Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale. Atta Sabri’s work has since been exhibited in Belgium, Iraq, Poland and the UAE.

Atta Sabri’s return to Baghdad is a connecting theme of the drawings, works in which he endeavours to grasp, interpret and critically engage with the immense and conflict-ridden changes, the corruption, the constant violence and the political instability into which his country has fallen. Due to a shortage of art supplies in Iraq, he initially created these works in pencils borrowed from his daughters. The drawings are both a personal visual archive and a diary of the evolutions in Baghdad and Iraq."