Ahmed Alsoudani in Artnet

Advance write up on show opening tonight by Charlie Finch:

What kind of art would you make if you were always on the run? If you lived in fear of arrest and were always moving across borders from one strange place to another? And how would your art practice change if you suddenly landed in the lap of luxury?

These questions arise from the life and work of Iraqi artist Ahmed Alsoudani, a man who defaced a poster of Saddam Hussein on a whim when he was a teenager and now, at 33, finds himself opening a solo show of new paintings at Chelsea's Goff + Rosenthal Gallery this weekend. After the minute Ahmed defaced Saddam, he was a marked man, who fled to Syria, living four dicey years there as a kind of non-person.

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