In spite of its Baghdad setting and intimately personal narrative, this highly emotional work reflects a
universal experience: the setting aside of childhood and the relinquishment of parental security, in this
case precipitated by the death of the artist’s father. The House That My Father Built re-creates a child’s
memories, perceptions, comforts, and anxieties through animation and memorabilia (pictures of the
artist’s parents and his father’s clothes hanging on a wall).
A native of Baghdad, Sadik Alfraji immigrated to the Netherlands in the early 1990s. He describes his
work, primarily multimedia installations, as "dealing with the problem of existence," perhaps in part as a
way of addressing his own displacement from Iraq. Over and over again in his work he confronts the
viewer with a solitary, large-eyed figure depicted in profile, footless and floating in space. It is this strange
figure, supersized into a giant, who is featured as the quietly sad observer in The House That My Father
Built. This work was initially commissioned for the 2010 exhibition Told, Untold, Retold, presented in
conjunction with the opening of the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar.
