CINCINNATI, Ohio — The Contemporary Arts Center is pleased to announce that it will host It Is What It Is: Conversations about Iraq, a new exhibition by Turner Prize-winning British artist Jeremy Deller commissioned and produced by Creative Time and the New Museum. 

The project does not attempt to make a statement on the war, rather it is meant to encourage public discussion of the history, present circumstances, and future of Iraq through unscripted, nonpartisan conversations in cities across the country.  These conversations with guest experts will be held in public sites throughout the country, and will be accompanied by the remains of a car destroyed in a bombing.

 In Cincinnati, the CAC will host the project on Fountain Square from 12:30 to 5 p.m. Monday, March 30.

At 6:30 p.m. the project participants will deliver a talk about their endeavor at the CAC.  The public is encouraged to visit both of the project’s components.

 The CAC is one of only a handful of institutions across the country hosting It Is What It Is: Conversations about Iraq.  Raphaela Platow, the Alice & Harris Weston Director and Chief Curator explains, “We wanted to host the project because of the fantastic opportunity it presented to our community.  This is not a piece with a political agenda.  It provides an opportunity for the people here to engage in conversations with eye-witnesses from the region, to see the evidence that is so often left in the aftermath of wartime tragedies, and to play a role in this interesting experiment around the art of human interaction that is journeying across the country.”

 Jeremy Deller conceived It Is What It Is to stimulate unmediated dialogue about Iraq, and our relationship to it as people and as a nation.  “I have read a ton of books and articles about the war but short of going to Iraq itself there is no substitute for meeting someone who has actually lived, or been there, hence the core part of this project,” said Deller. 

To this end, over 30 people with a variety of first-hand experiences of the country were available for conversations with thousands of visitors during the project’s installation at the New Museum in New York (February 10 to March 22). 

On Wednesday, the project will began a three-week road trip by RV from New York to Los Angeles, during which time the artist and guest experts—Jonathan Harvey (an Iraq war veteran and recently demobilized Psychological Operations platoon sergeant) and Esam Pasha (an Iraqi refugee, artist, and former translator for the Chief Advisor in the British Embassy of Baghdad)—will visit at least ten cities nationally.  This road trip will broaden and deepen the dialog begun in New York, extending the conversation to diverse audiences across the country. 

Also traveling with the experts is a car destroyed in a bombing on Al-Mutanabbi Street, Baghdad in March 2007. This tragedy killed over thirty people, and has taken on added significance because the street, named after a well-known Iraqi poet, was the site of numerous book markets and cafés, and was considered the nexus of Baghdadi cultural and intellectual life.  The car is meant to ground conversations in the facts, figures, and eyewitness descriptions that have been lacking in most information about the Iraq war, and is intended to serve as a visual aid to prompt open dialogue and civil conversation.  It was also one of a sparse selection of objects in the presentation at the New Museum.

It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq is curated for Creative Time by: Nato Thompson, Curator; and for the New Museum by: Laura Hoptman, Kraus Family Senior Curator, and Amy Mackie, Curatorial Assistant.  The research team includes: Shane Brennan, Sarah Demeuse, Ozge Ersoy, Jazmin Garcia, and Terri C. Smith.

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