It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq was a dynamic and mobile project by Jeremy Deller, commissioned by Creative Time and the New Museum. Intended to stimulate unmediated dialogue about the history, present circumstances, and future of Iraq, the project initially took the form of an exhibition at the New Museum where a variety of people with first-hand experiences of Iraq—journalists, Iraqi refugees, soldiers, and scholars—engaged in conversations with visitors.
At the end of March 2009, Deller took the project on the road and was joined by Sergeant Jonathan Harvey, an American veteran of the Iraq War; Esam Pasha, an Iraqi citizen; and Nato Thompson, Creative Time Curator. The group traveled aboard a specially outfitted RV and conducted conversations at more than ten public sites across the United States, including expanded sojourns at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. In tow was the ultimate conversation starter: a car destroyed in a bombing on Al-Mutanabbi Street, Baghdad in March 2007.
Photograph by Jeremy Deller
Jeremy Deller
It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq
Traveling
2009
