Bassam Al-Sabah graduated from IADT’s BA Visual Art Practice in 2016 and was awarded the RHA Graduate Studio Award in 2016 and the Temple bar Gallery graduate award in 2018. He was also shortlisted for the RDS Visual Arts Awards, curated by Alice Maher.  solo exhibitions include  Eight gallery (2017) and The Lab Gallery (2018). He was listed by Gemma Tipton in the Irish Times as an artist to watch in 2017.  Upcoming exhibitions include: A Fiction Close to Reality, Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2019 and A solo exhibition at Solstice Arts Centre (2019)  His work aims to convey visions of war, resistance, and perseverance. The work is concerned with how the past is continually revised to meet the present, when the juvenile fantasy breaks down into the reality of adulthood. The work references Arabic dubbed Japanese anime series, which were broadcast across the middle-east from the 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 ignored point in media globalization: the influence, effects, and agendas of Japanese anime on Arab popular culture.