Born in Baghdad in 1962, Mohammed Al-Shammary is an Iraqi self-taught multidisciplinary artist whose practice ranges from painting, sculpture, artist’s book, installation, photography to silkscreen. Since the late 1980s, his work has been shown in galleries and institutions across the Middle East, Europe and the United States including Columbia University, New York and Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston. His artist book based on the poem Mural by Mahmoud Darwish is included in the collection of the British Museum.

Ode of Rain is a dark painting that was inspired by the burning of hundreds of oil wells in Kuwait during the retreat of the Iraqi army in January 1991. Among the consequences of these fires were “oil rains” causing deposits of black particles all over the city. In this piece, Al-Shammarey paid tribute to Unshūdat al-matar (Rain Song) by Badr Shakir al-Sayyab (1926-1964), written thirty years before the events. One year earlier, in 2009, he produced an artist’s book of this celebrated poem. “As if dawn was about to break from them As if a sun was about to rise from them But the night pulls over a coverlet of blood I call out on the gulf “O gulf

O bestower of pearls, shells and death” The echo replies as if grieving: “O gulf O bestower of shells and death”

(Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, Rain Song, 1960 (extract), translated by Khaloud Al-Muttalib)

The work belongs to the series Ode of Rain (Homage to Iraqi Poet Bader Shaker Al-Saiab) - 2010.