Wassan Al-Khudhairi is the Chief Curator at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) and the former Hugh Kaul Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art where she organized Third Space /shifting conversations about contemporary art. She was invited to be a Curator for the 6th Asian Art Biennial in Taiwan in 2017 and Co-Artistic Director for 9th Gwangju Biennial in South Korea in 2012. Serving as the Founding Director of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar, Al-Khudhairi oversaw the opening of the Museum in 2010 and co-curated Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art and curated Cai Guo-Qiang: Saraab. More recently, she has been appointed as one of the Focus curators for the 2021 Armory Show. Her work predominantly focuses on modern and contemporary art from the Arab World.

Today on Baghdadia: Dr. Zainab Bahrani is an Iraqi professor of Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology at Columbia University. Professor Bahrani is the author and editor of twelve books in which she investigates the meaning of images and of art in general, addressing both ancient and modern philosophies of representation. Dr.Bahrani has also written over 50 articles, one of which, the Hellenization of Ishtar, was particularly intriguing to me. She discusses concepts of the body and ideologies of gender in both ancient Greece and the Near East. Another aspect of Bahrani’s work has been in the area of monument preservation, conservation and the politics of cultural heritage. Join us to listen to this expert share her knowledge of the ancient cradle of civilization and why we should all look to preserve the past!

Dr. Hala Al-Saraf is the founder of the Iraq Health Access Organization (IHAO). They focus on the remote areas across Iraq and provide primary health care, reproductive health and gender-based violence services. In 2016, she was awarded the Refugees International Organization's award in recognition of her work on behalf of displaced Iraqi citizens.