New art platform aims to create a cultural Silk Road

A new virtual gallery, Iterarte, is enabling access to works by artists from countries across the Mediterranean to South Asia – a region that was historically linked by empires and trade routes. As Melissa Gronlund explains in The National. 

“There’s an exchange across millennia – it’s the world of antiquity, the Silk Routes, and more recently, diasporas and migration,” says Tamara Chalabi, the Iraqi author and veteran arts supporter who founded Iterarte with the Indian entrepreneur Shilpa Sharma. 

Iterarte is organised both as a magazine – with features, podcasts, videos and even playlists curated by artists – as well as a sales gallery, selling (and shipping) art to online buyers. The pair are currently working with 18 artists, though not with exclusive representation. 

Rather, they will sell bodies of work that have been consigned to Iterarte, and commission new projects in a section called Variations in which artists render existing works in different mediums. 

“The art world can sometimes be a closed loop,” says Chalabi. “Many of the same artists are featured in different biennales. That makes it very hard for regional artists to break in, especially those from art scenes that are closed off for economic or political reasons.“ 

"Name one internationally known Iraqi artist who actually lives in Iraq. The same probably applies to many other places as well.”