Al-Karim studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad, specialising in ceramics, where he graduated in 1988. He went on to study at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, where he graduated with a ba degree in 2000. Halim al-Karim grew up in Baghdad during the 1960s and 1970s. He began making art using a variety of media including clay, painting and photography. Due to the second Gulf war, he went into a self-imposed three-year exile in the southern Iraqi desert before fleeing Iraq and seeking asylum in the Netherlands in 1992. Halim al-Karim has held many solo exhibitions in Dubai, Paris, the Netherlands, u.s.a., Jordan and Lebanon. He was nominated for the 2010 Sovereign Art Prize and was awarded the jury prize in the International Cairo Biennial in Egypt. He is one of the six artists whose work was featured in the Iraqi Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennial in 2011. His work is displayed in the collections of major museums, including the Arab Museum of Contemporary Art, Doha; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Saatchi Collection, London; Darat Al Funun, Amman; the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. Halim al-Karim lives and works between Dubai and Colorado, u.s.a.
