At Nuova Icona Assaf exhibits the series Greetings from Baghdad, photographic works manipulated on the computer. Diverse people have been asked to send a message from the Iraqi capital to distant relatives and friends. Just as in the photographic studies of the 1800s in which the portrayed personage posed against a well-known background scene, the characters of Assaf smile back at us in front of flaming oil fields, or apparently indifferent to the collapse of the statue of Saddam Hussein which is falling behind their shoulders. Even though the images present smiling characters looking straight ahead, the verbal messages sent by them are steeped in pessimism and anxiety at their future, more in keeping with the image background. Themes of war and hope for peace - in the artist who reflects on his motherland, turning his gaze from his land of adoption - which like all the West has learnt to export her own tension in other, distant realities.