Open Space 2024
16 February 2024 - 16 June 2024
Hussein Shikha
Hussein Shikha works at the intersection of visual art, design and research. He combines the rich visual language of his own culture and family history with the equally complex language of computer art. For his contribution to Open Space, he presents GARDEN_OF_EDEN.ISO, in which he combines motifs from the weaving tradition of Mesopotamian Marsh Arabs and ‘coarse-grained’ personal memories in the pixelated representation of the memory card of a game console from his youth.
GARDEN_OF_EDEN.ISO
This exhibition is inspired by the carpets woven by Marsh Arabs in the Mesopotamian wetlands of southern Iraq. These carpets are unique and distinct from any other textile tradition in the Middle East. Flowers, animals, human figures, symbols and geometric motifs are embroidered with wool thread on a hand-woven ground. Unfortunately, this is a practice that has been undermined by many factors, including industrialisation, colonialism and Iraq’s past and present tragedies. The carpets carry a rich collective history and can provide a tool for both de-modernising and creating more inclusive narratives. Knowledge of the craft is scarce, leading Hussein Shikha to critically ‘fabulate’, inventing stories. The ‘fabula’ (story) signifies a potentiality that can lead to a kind of historical speculation, in which one might be able to “present an impossible tale” while at the same time emphasising the “impossibility of telling it”.
GARDEN_OF_EDEN.ISO functions as a manipulated memory rooted in Shikha’s PlayStation 1 memory card and in his personal lived experience. He uses pixellation as a tool to present a fragmented reality that needs to be experienced in its fragmentation. Pixellation also becomes a thread or a connection between the traditional technologies of weaving and the development of digital computing.
About Hussein Shikha
Hussein Shikha was born and raised in Iraq. In 2009 he moved to Antwerp, where he is currently based. Between design, art, and research, Hussein Shikha’s practice betwixt design, art, and research engages with complex symbologies that reflect his heritage and family history through equally complex pixel drawing. His work is a reaction to dominant Modernist canons that have discredited the visual cultures he was raised in. His work entails experimental film, animation, textile and interactive installations. He holds a Master’s degree in Visual Arts from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and an Advanced Master’s degree of Research in Art and Design at Sint Lucas Antwerp. Hussein’s work was presented at BAK, Utrecht; Brakkegrond, Amsterdam; KIOSK, Ghent; and Kunsthal Extra City, Antwerp. He concluded residencies at Frans Masereel Centrum, MORPHO and Z33.