Manifestations of Reification in Contemporary Iraqi Art within the Framework of Capitalist Theory”

Abstract

The current study investigates the representations of reification in contemporary Iraqi painting in light of capitalist thought. The research consists of four chapters. The first chapter addresses the research problem, which is formulated as the following question: How is reification represented in contemporary Iraqi painting in light of capitalist thought? It also presents the significance of the study and the need for it, as well as the research objective, which is to identify the representations of reification in contemporary Iraqi painting within the framework of capitalist thought. The temporal limits of the study span from 2018 to 2024, while the spatial limits are confined to Iraq. This chapter also includes the definition of key terms used in the research. The second chapter, which constitutes the theoretical framework of the study, is divided into two sections. The first section examines the concept of reification from a philosophical perspective, while the second section discusses the representations of capitalist thought in contemporary Iraqi painting. This chapter also includes the indicators derived from the theoretical framework and a review of previous studies. The third chapter focuses on the research procedures and the research sample, which consists of three (3) visual models analyzed within the specified temporal and spatial boundaries, representing works by contemporary Iraqi artists. In the fourth chapter, the researcher presents a set of results and conclusions, the most significant of which is that many artists have criticized capitalism by incorporating industrial symbols into their artworks to convey a message to the viewer about the dominance of mechanized thought in the reification of the human self and the

replacement of human thought with industrial thought. The study relies on the

description and analysis of artworks, leading to a set of proposals and recommendations. The research concludes with a list of references and sources.