From Iraq to Ireland: UFO Robot Grendizer and visual artist Bassam Al-Sabah

In Ireland, from 15th March to 3rd June 2018, at The LAB Gallery (Dublin City Arts Office) in Dublin, there was the art exhibition Illusions of Love Dyed by Sunset by Iraqi visual artist Bassam Al-Sabah (24 years old). This art exhibition has influenced by Japanese animation series like UFO Robot Grendizer (1975-1977; it was called "Goldorak" in France and "Atlas Ufo Robot", "Ufo Robot Goldrake", or simply "Goldrake" in Italy), that it is very popular in Arabic countries with the title "Grendizer". About Grendizer popularity in Middle-East countries, I published an Italian article and an English interview with Lebanese street artists ASHEKMAN. This interview was one of the bibliography references of introduction article of Bassam exhibition on LAB Gallery website.

The LAB Gallery - Dublin City Arts Office
(link)

To knowing Bassam, his exhibition in Dublin and his artistic activities, we have contacted Bassam to give him a chance to talk about his work, his past in Iraq (he lived in Baghdad, like he told in this article published on The Irish Times in December 2016), and his relationship with Japanese animation, especially with Grendizer.

Bassam Al-Sabah

1) Could you please introduce yourself to the Italian public?

My name Is Bassam Al-Sabah, I am a visual artist based in Dublin, Ireland. I was born in Iraq originally and I moved over to Ireland after the war in 2004 [It started in 2003].

2012: Grendizer in Baghdad (Iraq)
(link and info)

2) When did you first watch, or learn about UFO Robot Grendizer in Iraq?  What kind of connection do you feel for it?

I think there is a collective connection to Grendizer in the Arab world. And this connection exists across generations. It must have been broadcast on television continuously for about 30 years, even my dad and his siblings remember watching it as teenagers. I guess the connection is quiet strong because there weren’t many other cartoons or comic books around when I grew up, there was just the maybe 10 or 12 cartoons on TV that would be on continuously.

Grendizer in Syria
(link)

I think the connection was also stronger with UFO Robot Grendizer because of the parallels between the storyline and what was going on in Iraq at the time. This whole narrative of the invading other from another planet and ideas around war and violence, maybe it resonated with me and other kids because we were living through something that felt similar to the story in the cartoon.

Alien invasion and war in UFO Robot Grendizer (ep. 15)

Flashback of a fight
From Grendizer ep. 2

Picture of Bassam Al-Sabah exhibition at The LAB Gallery

3) Would you like to say anything about your exhibition "Illusions of Love Dyed" presented at The LAB Gallery? How did you consider, include, or rework Grendizer's image?

A lot of the work in my exhibition in The LAB Gallery took reference from Arabic dubbed Japanese anime series, which were broadcast across the middle-east from 1980s onwards. Tackling themes of revolution, war and exile, the work projects political meaning onto these cartoons, which have been connected with a cross generational identity, shared by now adult Arabs. Drawing attention to an overlooked point in media globalization. The work looks at the impact and agendas of Japanese anime on Arab popular culture.

I also exhibited a new CGI film which features a recreation of my former home in Iraq, which my family cannot return to. As the film moves through the house, digital images begin to escape from the forgotten TV and computer screens and materialise into living forms. We then hear a narration in Arabic from my grandmother where she describes the burning of sentimental objects in the home before fleeing, and digital fabrications of these objects appear before disintegrating.

I think the show was preoccupied with a kind of chronological incoherence and defined by a nostalgia for lost futures.

Japanese Robot characters re-made by Bassam

Family souvenirs and Japanese animation influence.

From CGI film made by Bassam for exhibition

From CGI film

From CGI film

4) When looking at your website, I was particularly fascinated by your work "Soon after came the drums", where you show childhood, war and Japanese cartoons side to side.  Would you like to discuss it briefly?

I was looking at scenes of war and destruction from children’s animations and comparing between fantasy and reality or something that is make-believe and fact. Children tend to understand things through things they already understand, this work looks at how they may comprehend whatever horrific events around them, but only at a very juvenile level. The whole installation was made up of personal family photographs and videos mixed with screen caps and footage from the cartoons we would have watched as children.

"Soon after came the drums"
Personal pictures together with Japanese cartoons

Displacement, nostalgia and personal mythology play a significant role within this 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.

Installation title:
"The dust carried me into the watchful summer".
More info at this link.

A dismembered robot ispired by Japanese Animation.
Picture of "The dust carried me into the watchful summer" (September 2017).

5) Is there any other Japanese cartoon (besides Grendizer) that you feel attached to?

There’s a few from when I was a kid, cartoons such as Future Boy Conan [1978, directed by Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata], Robo Combattler V [1976-1977] and Arabian Nights: Sinbad’s Adventures [1975-1976], were on television all the time. When my family moved to Ireland and a whole new world of cartoons and programmes were available to me I was still really into anime due to having watched so much of it as a child in Iraq. I then started watching Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell.

Future Boy Conan
Cover of a Japanese magazine about anime TV series
(info)

Italian article about Arabian Nights: Sinbad's Adventures
In Italy the main character, "Sinbad", was called "Shirab"
From Radiocorriere TV n. 20, 1981

I also remember having a Super Nintendo emulator on our computer in Iraq where we played so many games that were derived from cartoons originally. So when we moved to Ireland I started watching all of them as a teenager for nostalgia sake. I was introduced to Cartoons like Sailor Moon or Yu Yu Hakusho as games as a kid and then as a teenager would watch them for the first time.

Sailor Moon videogame (1993)
Cover of French Edition (1994)
(link)

Yu Yu Hakusho videogame (1994)
The title is "Yu Yu Hakusho 2: Kakutou no Sho"
(link)

P. S. Special thanks to Sheena Barrett (The LAB Gallery, Dublin). Thanks also to Daria and Piero.

Bassam Al-Sabah official website: http://www.bassamalsabah.com/

The LAB Gallery (Dublin City Arts Office) in Dublin, official website:
http://www.dublincityartsoffice.ie/