

Chief Mission Residence (US Embassy in Baghdad)
2007
Dan Bayles's "Chief Mission Residence (US Embassy in Baghdad)" stands as one of the most politically charged large-scale works to emerge from the mid-2000s, confronting the physical and ideological architecture of American power at its most exposed. Executed in mixed media on canvas and measuring an imposing 213 by 242 centimetres, the work takes as its subject the fortified domestic space at the heart of the world's largest and most expensive diplomatic compound, completed amid the ongoing conflict in Iraq. Bayles channels the contradictions embedded in that structure, a residence designed for comfort and statesmanship yet surrounded by blast walls and checkpoints, translating them into a surface that carries the weight of both official representation and raw material instability. The scale of the canvas is deliberate and functional. At over two metres in each direction, the work refuses the intimacy of a document or a report and insists instead on the visceral, immersive register of historical painting. Bayles works across the picture plane with a layering methodology that accumulates texture, opacity, and incident, suggesting both the bureaucratic sediment of institutional life and the scarred surfaces of a city living through occupation. The result is a painting that operates simultaneously as political object, architectural meditation, and material investigation, holding those registers in productive tension without resolving them into polemic. For collectors, this is a work of significant scale and historical specificity, rooted in a precise geopolitical moment that continues to reverberate in contemporary discourse. Originally offered through the Saatchi Collection, it arrives with strong provenance and institutional context. The work ships from the United Kingdom, and international buyers exporting from the UK should note that proof of export documentation is required to avoid applicable VAT charges, with a refund available upon submission of that documentation.
- Medium
- Mixed media on canvas
- Overall
More by Dan Bayles



Start the Discussion
Request access to join the discussion