Rushdi Anwar draws from his personal experience as a Kurdish refugee and survivor of state violence to contemplate issues of displacement and trauma endured as a result of colonial and ideological regimes. Anwar presents several bodies of work, collectively titled A Hope and Peace to End All Hope and Peace (2023–ongoing), which investigate the enduring influence of the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916), a French-British- led foreign strategy on the promise of the downfall of the Ottoman Empire dividing the West Asian region into European-dominated colonies. Combining sculpture, audio, archival photographs, maps and documents, the works lay bare the farce of history, connecting the past to present conditions of geopolitics in the region.