With illustrations of the artist's works from 1985 to 2011, this monograph provides a detailed survey of the Iraqi artist Halim Al Karim's life and artistic practice within the context of the social and political changes in Iraq.

'Halim Al Karim is one of a generation of Arab artists forced by recent global events to live and create unexpected relationships between distant places, geographically and culturally. With dogged determination, he has devised and implemented the codes and means of his own artistic explorations. Without urgency, he has owned to everything, and particularly to all the deserts — those in his soul and the real deserts of his days as a young man buried in a war-torn country. This dereliction has never left him since.

From his current life in the United States, Dubai, and Holland (where he divides his time), from his travels around the world, and from Iraq, of course, where he was born, Halim Al Karim has drawn on and been enriched by diverse experiences, sometimes painful. These have led to an intimate isolation, now connected to forms of art expressed between secrecy and a search for an unspeakable truth.

His work draws meaning from his capacity to resonate with the world and to invent forms, gestures, codes, and symbols that allow him to express his obsessions and problematics in unprecedented ways.

Nadine Descendre, the author of this book, sets out to retrace the footsteps of the artist. She borrows from the life of the man, the better to explore his working methods and the rules and techniques he has imposed on himself. This approach lets the works speak for themselves and enables the reader to get past their initial invisibility.' - from back cover.