Culture as a living part of the Forum.
MEF places Mesopotamia’s living artistic heritage alongside its economic dialogue, connecting contemporary cultural expression with the region’s future.
Celebrating the Living Heritage of Mesopotamia
The programme brings together four artistic practices that carry forward the traditions of Mesopotamia — in language, image, music and clay — alongside the economic conversations of Baghdad Summit 2026.
Bahira Abdulatif Yasin
Writer, translator and academic whose work bridges Arabic and Spanish literary cultures.
Born in Baghdad in 1957, Bahira Abdulatif Yasin is an Iraqi-Spanish writer, translator and academic. After teaching in the Spanish Department at the University of Baghdad, she moved to Madrid in 1995, where her writing, translation, interpreting and university work have sustained a dialogue between Arabic and Spanish literary cultures.
Fuad Hamdi
Hybrid figures between myth, memory and the surreal.
Born in Iraq in 1962, Fuad Hamdi is a Canadian-Iraqi painter and sculptor based in Hamilton, Ontario. His work has been exhibited internationally since 1979. The Forum exhibition presents thirty paintings spanning new and recent practice, offering a concentrated view of his symbolic and surrealist visual vocabulary.
Fuad Hamdi — Virtual Exhibition
Enter the complete thirty-work exhibition in an immersive viewing room and gallery-wall experience.
Sumeriat
Iraq’s all-women ensemble, conducted by Maestro Alaa Majeed.
Founded and conducted by Maestro Alaa Majeed, Sumeriat is Iraq’s first all-women musical ensemble, bringing together around sixty performers. The ensemble presents the Iraqi maqam tradition through orchestral performance and appears live during the Day 1 Gala Dinner.
Aws Al-Awsi
Ceramicist and creator of the Forum’s commemorative gift.
Ceramicist Aws Al-Awsi has hand-built the Forum’s commemorative gift: a clay replica inspired by the Tablet of Shamash. Presented to heads of delegation during the closing session, each piece connects contemporary craft to the material memory of Mesopotamia.
The Lamassu
Guardian of the Mesopotamian threshold.
Carved as a winged, human-headed bull or lion, the lamassu stood at the gateways of Assyrian palaces as a protective spirit guarding the threshold between the outside world and the halls of power within. Sculptors gave the figure five legs so that it appears to stand firmly when viewed from the front and to stride forward when viewed from the side.
Its presence in the Forum’s cultural language is a reminder that Mesopotamia’s past is not a closed chapter, but a living inheritance continually rediscovered and remade.