The Blue Ink Pocket, and, 2022-2026

The Blue Ink Pocket, and, 2022-2026
Oil on canvas, cupboard
179.5 × 115 × 86 cm

Ali Eyal’s paintings are characterized by their intense subjectivity that bring forth fragmented narratives and surreal visual scenes and compositions. Set against the impossible scale of calamity in war, Eyal gives curious attention to the intimate, and often absurd, accounts to be found in this concentrated space.

In this assemblage of painting and sculpture, the viewer encounters disjointed paintings of body fragments housed inside a wardrobe. Its doors are etched with images of trees and a shed, referencing the family farm where Eyal grew up south of Baghdad. On the back of the wardrobe, written in chalk, Eyal describes the paintings as “duplicates” created by an artist unable to travel, while the works themselves circulate freely—easily shipped to distant exhibitions the artist may never visit.
As described in a video piece featuring these paintings, they belong to a larger body of work “stronger passports,” the title of the work indicated the pieces found in the “blue ink pocket”. The narrator goes on to describe that only fragments of the original paintings remain, rediscovered in unlikely places—among cotton, inside a sack of rice, or elsewhere in storage. Gathered together within the wardrobe, they form an incomplete archive that can never fully be restored.

Works from this assemblage have been exhibited at venues including Kabinett at Art Basel, Basel (2026); ChertLüdde, Berlin (2024); and Brief Histories, New York City (2022). The corresponding video work The Blue Ink Pocket, and. (2022) has also appeared at Documenta Fifteen, Kassel (2022), and the SAW Center, Ottawa (2022).

Photo by Marjorie Brunet Plaza.