A striking aspect of Risan’s art books, many of which were produced while he lived in Damascus, is the pictorial system that records the ravaging of his birthplace. History is mixed with subjective experience through personal allusions and spatial symbolism. Moreover, the forms utilized by the artist–settings, textures, and signifiers–also appear in the works of Malallah, Yahya, and Ghaib. The mid-2000s works of these artists display a unified aesthetic, one developed in close proximity, then sustained after their exodus. Shakir Hassan Al Said’s openings, or cuts, which attempt to merge “the two-dimensional world of art with that of non-dimensional space,” achieving “spatial reduction” and collapsed time, are recurring components of their paintings, installations, and books, yet among the younger generation such cavities signal the absence of temporality due to a state of crisis.[15] Malallah summarizes how her circle translated Iraq’s devastation into pictorial forms by confirming that the intensive treatment of materials found in her work employs an “intrinsically destructive process to engender the visceral experience of the reality of war irrespective of its geographic/political particular.”[16] Although the members of the Baghdad set are now exiled in other parts of the Arab world, Europe, and North America, their artistic practices remain in communication as they continue to investigate the “chaos and disarray” that has befallen their former center. At the moment, they are concurrently identifying the archetypes of the diasporic imagination.[17]