As contemporary uses of book art took hold in the Iraqi art scene at the end of the twentieth century, postmodern formalism was introduced through mixed-media approaches, and often involved the transformation of the art object into a freestanding installation. Abstraction is another common denominator in works from this period, as artists sought to extend visual narratives beyond the edges of individual pages. Hanaa Malallah, a member of the Eighties Generation, situates the inclusion of non-objective elements as part of a broader effort to return to Iraq’s “civilizational roots” while establishing an environment through which the accumulation of its visual culture is activated. What is defined as Iraqi abstraction, Malallah affirms, is in fact the summation of past modes of representation.[12] Abstraction as a continuum in Iraqi aesthetics is most visible in the geometric forms and lines that have been carried through the art of successive civilizations. The country’s modernist painters excavated the roots of abstraction in local art by refashioning figuration according to the forms of ancient prototypes while dividing compositions with the implied movement of calligraphy and the notion of infinity found in Islamic art. Color in modernist works frequently reflects the spectrum of Iraq’s material culture and natural environment, triggering associations and visual memory.