COURTESY MARLBOROUGH CONTEMPORARY
Two months after Marlborough Chelsea took over the programming of the second floor of the Marlborough flagship space in London, and rechristened the two-continent enterprise Marlborough Contemporary, they’ve added a new artist to the roster: Ahmed Alsoudani, the Iraq-born, New York-based artist who was most recently on the roster at Gladstone Gallery.
“We are proud to welcome Ahmed Alsoudani to the gallery’s increasingly diverse and robust roster of artists,” Max Levai, Marlborough Contemporary’s principal director, said in a statement. “Ahmed unflinchingly tackles the political issues that threaten our freedoms and civil liberties. His commitment to drawing on his own experiences of wartime malfeasance is vital, particularly given the uncertainty of the current political climate.”
Alsoudani was born in Baghdad in 1975, and sought asylum in the United States shortly before the terrorist attacks on September 11. He received a BFA from in 2008, and was soon after represented by Haunch of Venison, the now-shuttered gallery with outposts in New York, London, and Berlin that was owned by Christie’s. When his home country returned to the Venice Biennale in 2011 after a 35-year absence, Alsoudani was one of the six artists chosen to represent Iraq in its pavilion.
The artist’s first show will be at the newly revamped London gallery, though the date has yet to be determined.