Bassam Al-Sabah

Having fled his native Iraq in the face of war, Bassam Al-Sabah was raised in Belfast. His practice is characterised by a changing of states. Through a process of ‘media archaeology’, Al-Sabah reinterprets, remediates and reprocesses excerpts from popular culture – especially those found within his childhood – to create visually-rich computer-animated worlds. Al-Sabah is influenced by the scenes of conflict in dubbed Japanese anime TV shows, which were broadcast during the Iraq War. The artist uses the dreamscapes to subtly explore his own embedded historical trauma and feelings of dislocation and displacement felt by diasporic bodies. His reinterpretations involve fluid, fragmented and non-linear narratives, a reflection of cut scenes in video games, the predestined interruptions in gameplay often used for story exposition. The player momentarily loses control of their character’s actions.