Home Participants 25th Biennale of Sydney (2026) Basil Al-Rawi

Basil Al-Rawi

Left to right: Nasri Sayegh, Retinæ – 4, Retinæ – 3, Retinæ – 2, Retinæ – 1, 2025. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney and Rubaiya Qatar, Qatar Museums with generous assistance from Australian Tapestry Workshop and Weaver, David Pearce. Courtesy of the artist © Nasri Sayegh. Tears Naturale, 2025. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney and Rubaiya Qatar, Qatar Museums. Courtesy of the artist © Nasri Sayegh. Basil Al-Rawi, House of Memory / بيت الذاكرة, 2025. Presentation at the 25th Biennale of Sydney was made possible by Rubaiya Qatar, Qatar Museums with generous support from Culture Ireland. Courtesy of the artist and Iraq Photo Archive contributors © Basil Al-Rawi. Mounira Al Solh, I Strongly Believe in Our Right to Be Frivolous, 2012–ongoing. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney and Rubaiya Qatar, Qatar Museums with generous support from Mondriaan Fund and generous assistance from Knights Family Jabula Foundation. Courtesy of the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut/Hamburg © Mounira Al Solh. Installation view, 25th Biennale of Sydney, Rememory, 2026, Campbelltown Arts Centre. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.

Basil Al-Rawi is an Irish-Iraqi visual artist working across photography, moving image, sculpture, and immersive media. His practice uses archival and image-based processes to examine how personal and collective histories are mediated through technology, often merging physical and virtual space to reconstruct lost or silenced narratives. Informed by his dual heritage, Al-Rawi creates poetic counter-archives that explore how personal and cultural memory is formed and transmitted. Recent projects engage with virtual reality, film, and photographic archives to reimagine sites of displacement and belonging, offering spaces of reflection and re-connection between past and present.

Basil Al-Rawi, House of Memory / بيت الذاكرة , 2025. Presentation at the 25th Biennale of Sydney was made possible by Rubaiya Qatar, Qatar Museums with generous support from Culture Ireland. Courtesy of the artist and Iraq Photo Archive contributors © Basil Al-Rawi. Installation view, 25th Biennale of Sydney, Rememory, 2026, Campbelltown Arts Centre. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.

Front to back: Basil Al-Rawi, House of Memory / بيت الذاكرة , 2025. Presentation at the 25th Biennale of Sydney was made possible by Rubaiya Qatar, Qatar Museums with generous support from Culture Ireland. Courtesy of the artist and Iraq Photo Archive contributors © Basil Al-Rawi.. Mounira Al Solh, I Strongly Believe in Our Right to Be Frivolous, 2012–ongoing. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney and Rubaiya Qatar, Qatar Museums with generous support from Mondriaan Fund and generous assistance from Knights Family Jabula Foundation. Courtesy of the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut/Hamburg. Helen Grace, Justice for Violet and Bruce, 1980/2022. This version was created for the Biennale of Sydney. Originally supported by Wagga Wagga Art Gallery. Courtesy of the artist © Helen Grace. Installation view, 25th Biennale of Sydney, Rememory, 2026, Campbelltown Arts Centre. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.

Basil Al-Rawi

Born 1981, Kuwait

Lives and works in Cork, Ireland

House of Memory / 2025

virtual reality installation (Quest 3 headset and controllers), single-channel video (CRT monitor), majlis seating, audio headphones. VR approx. 10 mins; video looped 15 mins

Presentation at the 25th Biennale of Sydney was made possible by Rubaiya Qatar, Qatar Museums with generous support from Culture Ireland

Courtesy of the artist and Iraq Photo Archive contributors

Taking a traditional Iraqi ‘shanasheel’ home as its opening setting, Basil Al-Rawi’s House of Memory / positions personal storytelling as an antidote to the reductive representations of Iraqi culture which dominate Western media. Collating family photos and the stories behind them via submissions to his online Iraq Photo Archive platform, House of Memory / transforms intimate, everyday memories into an immersive space and “counter archive”. Knowing that many formal photographic archives from Iraq are held by Western institutions and uphold a colonial or Orientalist image of Iraq, Al-Rawi uses virtual reality to turn an ever-growing personal archive of still images into living, feeling, memory. In both excavating and reconstructing emotional landscapes, House of Memory / creates a digital space that more accurately captures the nuanced and multi-faceted realities of Iraqi experiences.

Using video game aesthetics to subvert one-dimensional and increasingly – since the 2003 U.S. led-invasion – violent representations of Iraq, House of Memory / rejects the gamification of trauma to embrace a deeply personal and innately shared history.