J’ai grandi
تَرَعْرَعْتُ
Forty years of my life, spent moving across borders, through wars, displacement, and long waiting. I never had a permanent home, but I found the meaning of home in a glance, in a photograph, in the silence of walls.
This book is not just my story it documents what my eyes have witnessed: from frontlines in Iraq and Syria, to the faces of refugees, to fleeting ordinary moments that, in the midst of chaos, felt more valuable than any victory.
I chose lithographic printing because every image here carries the weight of time like a stone shaped by both memory and event. Each scene is etched, just as life has been etched into my memory.
“The Cover Is Made of Stone” is a metaphor for the hardness I faced, for the weight these images carry, and for the kind of shelter the camera offered me.
This book is an attempt to gather the fragments, and fix them to the page.
MONOLITHOGRAPHY
This lithographic stone composition on paper and cardboard by Ali Arkady (1982), an Iraqi photojournalist and artist who has taken refuge in France, was produced between 2021 and 2023. By printing photographs of contemporary conflicts on limestone blocks, Ali Arkady expresses the suffering of people oppressed by war and exile. He bears witness to his past, his experiences in Iraq, and the wars of the present, on materials that are both perennial and fragile, such as stone, and ephemeral too, like paper. This composite work takes the form of a book. It is superimposed with multiple lithographic prints that are linked together, and can be remade and reshuffled in different ways.
Ali Arkady, a graduate of Beaux-Arts de Paris, Class of 2022, received the award in the same year for his work Monolithography Book. The acquisition was supported by Les Amis des Beaux-Arts, with a €3,000 contribution to integrate the piece into the school’s permanent collection.
MONOLITHOGRAPHY
Among the featured artists, Ali Arkady was selected in 2022 as part of the "Entrée en collection" program. His work, Monolithography, was acquired and entered the Beaux-Arts de Paris collection with the support of Les Amis des Beaux-Arts, as part of their annual initiative to highlight and support outstanding recent graduates.
This recognition was celebrated during a special event held at Beaux-Arts de Paris, organized by Les Amis, where new members gathered and had the opportunity to discover the most recent acquisitions by artists including Ali Arkady.
4o
: Beaux-Arts de Paris, Paris 6e
MIX
FARMAN 74
AUTOHISTORIAS
exhibition 2024
Ali Arkady’s Monolithography book is featured in the group exhibition Autohistorias, held at Beaux-Arts de Paris.
Inspired by the work of Chicana feminist theorist and poet Gloria Anzaldúa, the exhibition brings together student works, historical collections from the school, and invited artists. It explores themes of personal narrative, hybrid identities, and political allegory through self-portraits, collages, and intimate archives.
Arkady’s contribution reflects his continued exploration of memory and personal history as tools for collective storytelling.
Beaux-Arts de Paris, Paris 6e