The dust carried me into the watchful summer
| September 21st - September 28th, 2017
My work aims to convey visions of war, resistance and perseverance. I utilise a multi-media installation comprising of video, painting, sculpture and printed matter. The work is concerned with how the past is continually reviewed to meet the present, when the juvenile make-believe disrupts reality of adulthood.
Within my nine years of living in Baghdad, Iraq went through three major conflicts: The Iraqi Kurdish civil war (1995-6), the bombing of Iraq (1998) and the Iraq war which began in 2003. As much of my work reflects on the experience of being shifted from one culture to another due to global political events and seeing your experience politicised and debated. The link between violence and representation is central within my work as it examines the agendas and effects of broadcasting and its ramifications within society.
Displacement, nostalgia and personal mythology play a significant role within my work as it tries to capture a recollection that is not fixed, but rather an amalgamation of various narratives both false and true that have collapsed into each other causing the sensation of falsified memory and trauma. To achieve this I have been drawing on the collection of scenes of war and destruction from children’s animations and deconstructing the parallels between fantasy and reality, the hero and the everyday, the make-believe and fact. - Bassam Al Sabah (2017)
bassamalsabah.com/thedustcarried.html
