FARAGO One group that cannot come to PS1, even if they want to, are several of the Iraqi artists themselves. There’s a young artist from Baghdad named Ali Eyal, who has one of the tenderest works in this show: pillowcases that he embroidered with records of the dreams and nightmares his family has while sleeping. He lives between Baghdad and Beirut. While some artists who wanted to come to the opening of the show in New York had their visa applications denied, Mr. Eyal did not try to apply. He knew his application would be rejected.

ARANGO He and the other Iraqi artists confront Americans with Iraqi pain, and our complicity. For me the art that did this most powerfully was by Hanaa Malallah: “She/He Has No Picture” (2019). It’s a series of portraits that commemorates the victims of the Amiriyah shelter, which the U.S. bombed during the gulf war [in 1991] — it had the highest number of civilian deaths of either war, more than 400 dead.

FARAGO She made dozens of portraits of these fatalities, including children. They smile, or just sit calmly, and the pictures have these burned, crackled edges, like they’re fading away with time. There is no beauty in “Theater of Operations,” but this was the closest I felt to something like grace.

ARANGO I went to al-Amiriyah in 2016, and saw the photographs that this artist was drawing from. Fraying, gray images of children who had died there. It brought me back to that place, and to the layers and layers of trauma — from the Iran-Iraq war to ’91 to sanctions to 2003 to ISIS.

You can drive around Baghdad and see a destroyed building, and wonder what happened: Was it from the gulf war, the 2003 invasion, the insurgency that came after? This show conveys that same layered feeling: one trauma after another.

Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991-2011

Through March 1 at MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens; 718-784-2084, moma.org/ps1.