\nIraqi artist Ali Eyal remembers being nine years old, gazing out at the Baghdad skyline from a car on a Ferris wheel. Burn that image into your mind<\/em>, his mother told him, knowing the city would never be the same. It was 2003, and mere days later, the United States and its allies would launch their invasion of Iraq, raining airstrikes down on the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cI felt like I became a kid when I looked at a TV this morning,\u201d Eyal told writer Ren\u00e9e Reizman last week, two days after the US and Israel began their bombardment of Iran, triggering a cascade of destruction and panic across the Gulf region. In a must-read profile, the Los Angeles-based artist, who is showing a painting and a suite of drawings in this year\u2019s Whitney Biennial, talks about the ongoing reverberations of the war of his childhood, the disappearance of his father, and the surreal, twilit vistas of grief and devastation he makes to process.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Also in this edition, we honor a giant: Thaddeus Mosley, the self-taught sculptor who passed last Friday at the age of 99. Aaron Short memorializes the magician of wood, who captured the joyful improvisation of jazz in burnished and chiseled forms.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2014Lisa Yin Zhang, associate editor<\/em><\/p>\nAli Eyal in the yard channeling his uncles in Amsterdam (photo by Samar Al Summary, courtesy the artist)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAli Eyal Gives Testimony<\/h3>\n \u201cI was nine years old, and I felt like I lost that childhood,\u201d the Whitney Biennial artist told Hyperallergic<\/em>, reflecting on the US\u2019s war in Iraq, the disappearance of his father, and the art he makes to process.<\/p>\n\n
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