From Babel to the Last King of Iraq: a civilisation that spans millennia

From 29 January to 17 May, head to Casa Árabe to explore the work of Iraqi artist Hanoos Hanoos, which intertwines the myth of Babel with Iraq's recent history to show how splendour and tragedy can coexist within the same cultural heritage. 

The exhibition focuses on two of his artworks, Tower of Babel No. 50 and The Massacre at Al-Rehab Palace, as well as the sketches that bear witness to the artist's journey towards the finished work.

On one hand, Hanoos carried out an in-depth artistic investigation of the Tower of Babel, inspired by the historian Juan Luis Montero Fenollós. Its deconstruction and destruction are taken as a metaphor for historical and contemporary chaos. On the other hand, his interest in social art and the historical memory of Iraq is reflected in The Massacre at Al-Rehab Palace (2025), where he explores a historical and autobiographical perspective on the assassination of King Faisal II, using documentation and imagination, paying tribute to the monarch and evoking the violence of the event with references to Goya and Picasso, in a line of work focused on the massacres and collective traumas of the country.

Hanoos' work links the contemporary with the ancestral, interpreting the remnants of a civilisation to offer metaphors of humanity itself. His meticulous creative process starts from chaos to build narrative images loaded with mystery and tension. Through these images, the artist turns historical memory into his own visual language, where the personal and the collective play off one another. Thus, both the biblical narrative and the episodes of modern Iraqi history are revealed as universal reflections on power, violence and human frailty.

Hanoos Hanoos (Kufa, 1958) is a painter, printmaker and professor. He gained his Bachelor's Degree and Doctorate in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid. He began his studies at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad (1974-1979) and, after travelling through Europe, he completed his training in Madrid, his home since 1981, where he obtained his doctorate Cum Laude on the work of Al-Wasiti.

Image Credits:

• Close-up of Tower of Babel No. 51. 182x 139cm Mixed technique on canvas. 2025.