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Muralists Breathe Life Into Blast Walls

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The Associated Press

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 26, 2008

BAGHDAD - It's art ornamenting life: murals of soothing landscapes and historical heroes covering the blast walls that are now as much a part of Baghdad's cityscape as date palms and desert dust.

The idea took off last year when Iraqi aid groups sought to provide work for young artists - and offer a bit of hope and a splash of color to a city whose signature hue is oatmeal brown.

But fully rising above Iraq's sectarian suspicions has proved a challenge.

Many members in the founding group of artists are putting down their brushes to protest requests from neighborhood councils to depict politically charged sectarian themes such as Sunni shrines in Sunni districts or Shiite saints in Shiite areas.

"We'd rather refuse the work than do that," said Ali Saleem Badran, one of the original crew of muralists in the Jamaat al-Jidaar, or the Wall Group. "That is not what this work is supposed to say."

But that is what Baghdad has become after years of sectarian killings and threats: a quilt of Sunni and Shiite enclaves.

While some displaced families are crossing the lines and returning to their old neighborhoods as violence ebbs, the capital may never fully regain its place as a true mixing ground for Iraq's religious and ethnic groups.

The mural project began in early 2007 when Iraqi civic groups approached aspiring and student artists, including Badran, who was then in his last year of art school.

Hundreds of concrete slabs - each about 12 feet by 6 feet and designed to shield against car bombs and other threats - were gradually turned into an open-air art gallery meant to boost spirits and kindle optimism.

For now, most of the paintings on blast walls are apolitical, portraying themes on the region's past as Mesopotamia, the Sumerian and Assyrian cultures, and Baghdad's place as an intellectual heart of the medieval Islamic world.

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