Wesaam Al-Badry
Firebaugh # I, 2021

Archival pigment print, 40 x 32 inches
Edition 1/4
Framed
Courtesy of the artist and Jenkins Johnson Gallery,
New York and San Francisco
Estimated value: $8,300

“Once when I was living in the heart of a pomegranate...”

“Pomegranate” explores the correlation between labor, migration, and identity.

Migrants work in the shadows, unknown and unrecognized by the society that enjoys the fruits of their labor. They exist as an idea, an abstraction, living separate lives close to the land and far from the mainstream.  The contributions of migrant workers and their families are priceless; their labor benefits Americans across political lines. How can we start a dialogue about migration and labor in contemporary society while challenging archaic forms of power and segregation?

“I heard a seed saying, ‘Someday I shall become a tree, and the wind will sing in my branches, and the sun will dance on my leaves, and I shall be strong and beautiful through all the seasons.”
- Khalil Gibran, The Pomegranate

About the Artist:
Wesaam Al-Badry

Photographer and writer Wessam Al-Badry (b.1984, Nasiriyah, Iraq) examines Western consumerism’s influence on traditional Muslim culture. When Al-Badry was seven years old, at the outset of what became known as the Gulf War, his mother fled on foot with her five children, including his three-day-old sister. They arrived at a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia, where they stayed for four years. In 1994, Al-Badry and his family were relocated to Lincoln, Nebraska. As a young man growing up in Middle America, Al-Badry fiercely felt the disconnect between his experiences in Iraq and the refugee camps, and his new American reality.

His series Al Kouture reveals the tension between Occidental and Arab-Islamic ideologies. By tailoring and repurposing couture silk scarves into niqabs, Al-Badry investigates female objectification at the intersections of both male and market desires. In exploring the possibilities of assimilation in a vast and polarized world, Al-Badry asks his audience, “Would the Western world accept the niqab if it were on the racks of luxury fashion designers?”

Al-Badry's work was recently featured in the exhibition Contemporary Muslim Fashions at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, before travelling to Frankfurt’s Museum Angewandte Kunst. His photographs have been acquired by Stanford University’s Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts and the Toledo Art Museum. Al-Badry will participate in Hank Willis Thomas’ For Freedoms project.

His photographs have been featured in Forbes Magazine, Huffington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle, and in campaigns for the UNHCR, the ACLU, and other global organizations. Al-Badry has also worked for global media outlets, including CNN and Al-Jazeera America. He received his BFA in photography at San Francisco Art Institute and is currently pursuing a master's degree in journalism at University of California, Berkeley.

Website: wesaamalbadry.com | jenkinsjohnsongallery.com
Facebook: /jenkinsjohnsongallerysfnyc
Instagram: @wesaamalbadry | @jenkinsjohnsongallery
Twitter: @jjgallery