Artist Ali Eyal staged a one-day unsanctioned Iraqi pavilion at a Chevron gas station on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, on May 29, satirizing America's oil war and the absence of an official Iraqi pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale. Curated by fellow artist David Horvitz, the installation titled "Welcome to Iraq" featured Eyal posing as a black-market petrol salesman, with painted jugs and a television set displaying Arabic calligraphy reading "We have oil here." Eyal sold pocket-sized oil pastel drawings of candles in bottles, referencing his childhood in Baghdad during the US occupation and the fuel shortages caused by sanctions.
This pop-up matters because it critiques both the nationalistic framework of the Venice Biennale and the global infrastructure of resource extraction, connecting the 2003 invasion of Iraq to ongoing conflicts and fuel crises worldwide. By staging his pavilion at a gas station in Venice, California—a deliberate pun on the Biennale's host city—Eyal offers a darkly comic rejoinder to institutional art world politics and the enduring trauma of war, highlighting how personal memory and geopolitical critique can intersect in unexpected public spaces.