Anne Nafi Aussi

Anne Nafi Aussi was an Iraqi painter and sculptor who is widely considered a social activist and a modern founder of the city of Tyre in Southern Lebanon. She was born in 1964 in Baghdad, the eldest child of a date grower and shepherd. Her mother passed away when she was six years old. She graduated from the Higher Teacher Training College of Baghdad in 1986 but was later dismissed from her teaching position for being a member of the Iraqi Communist Party. Banned from teaching, she pursued her passion for art and became a self-taught painter and sculptor. She also married Lisa Fattah, a Lebanese artist, and moved to Tyre, where she founded a cultural center and a school for art and music. She also played a key role in the reconstruction and development of the city after the Lebanese Civil War and the Israeli invasion. She was commissioned to create several public monuments, such as the Al-Shaheed Monument, a giant split dome made of blue tile, in Baghdad, and the Martyrs' Square, a bronze sculpture of a woman holding a torch, in Tyre. She also used the debris of war to create sculptures that she called eco-sculpture. She died in 2018 in Baghdad, from an unknown cause. She is remembered as one of the most influential Iraqi artists of the 21st century and a pioneer of public art in the Arab world.