My work is informed by the experience of growing up and fleeing my homeland in Iraq as well as existing simultaneously between two worlds: the sphere of privilege and relative comfort in the U.S. and the zone of instability and conflict where my family remains in Iraq. These paradigms of conflict and comfort support an unstable binary that disconnects individuals from each other and desensitizes them to the struggles of others. Achieving a resolution between the two drives much of the impetus behind my work.

Thus I perceive the artist’s role as that of an initiator—one who establishes a platform of engagement between viewers who actively participate in the work and contribute collectively to its narrative. Since 2007, I have been crafting these platforms of engagement using network technologies, robotics, and mobile mapping to provoke dialogue on international politics and the effects of warfare on individuals and society.

In an increasingly interconnected world, my work emphasizes viewers who are empowered as autonomous participants and who shape the initiated platform into multiple branching and rhizomatic narratives. Each individual’s autonomous participation contributes to a more deeply personal encounter, whose experience re-engages their desensitized psyches with the realities of war.

In such a complex landscape of unmanned conflicts and rapidly shifting technological frameworks, the dichotomy of pure pleasure in aesthetics is a privilege difficult to justify. In my work, aesthetic pleasure instead operates as a strategy, enticing viewers to move closer, to engage within the platform, and to allow it to unfold with frisson and multidimensional tension. Ensnaring viewers within such tension activates the viewer’s agency further as a sense of micro-community begins to develop in response.

My work is informed by the experience of growing up and fleeing my homeland in Iraq as well as existing simultaneously between two worlds: the sphere of privilege and relative comfort in the U.S. and the zone of instability and conflict where my family remains in Iraq. These paradigms of conflict and comfort support an unstable binary that disconnects individuals from each other and desensitizes them to the struggles of others. Achieving a resolution between the two drives much of the impetus behind my work.

Thus I perceive the artist’s role as that of an initiator—one who establishes a platform of engagement between viewers who actively participate in the work and contribute collectively to its narrative. Since 2007, I have been crafting these platforms of engagement using network technologies, robotics, and mobile mapping to provoke dialogue on international politics and the effects of warfare on individuals and society.

In an increasingly interconnected world, my work emphasizes viewers who are empowered as autonomous participants and who shape the initiated platform into multiple branching and rhizomatic narratives. Each individual’s autonomous participation contributes to a more deeply personal encounter, whose experience re-engages their desensitized psyches with the realities of war.

In such a complex landscape of unmanned conflicts and rapidly shifting technological frameworks, the dichotomy of pure pleasure in aesthetics is a privilege difficult to justify. In my work, aesthetic pleasure instead operates as a strategy, enticing viewers to move closer, to engage within the platform, and to allow it to unfold with frisson and multidimensional tension. Ensnaring viewers within such tension activates the viewer’s agency further as a sense of micro-community begins to develop in response.

My work is informed by the experience of growing up and fleeing my homeland in Iraq as well as existing simultaneously between two worlds: the sphere of privilege and relative comfort in the U.S. and the zone of instability and conflict where my family remains in Iraq. These paradigms of conflict and comfort support an unstable binary that disconnects individuals from each other and desensitizes them to the struggles of others. Achieving a resolution between the two drives much of the impetus behind my work.

Thus I perceive the artist’s role as that of an initiator—one who establishes a platform of engagement between viewers who actively participate in the work and contribute collectively to its narrative. Since 2007, I have been crafting these platforms of engagement using network technologies, robotics, and mobile mapping to provoke dialogue on international politics and the effects of warfare on individuals and society.

In an increasingly interconnected world, my work emphasizes viewers who are empowered as autonomous participants and who shape the initiated platform into multiple branching and rhizomatic narratives. Each individual’s autonomous participation contributes to a more deeply personal encounter, whose experience re-engages their desensitized psyches with the realities of war.

In such a complex landscape of unmanned conflicts and rapidly shifting technological frameworks, the dichotomy of pure pleasure in aesthetics is a privilege difficult to justify. In my work, aesthetic pleasure instead operates as a strategy, enticing viewers to move closer, to engage within the platform, and to allow it to unfold with frisson and multidimensional tension. Ensnaring viewers within such tension activates the viewer’s agency further as a sense of micro-community begins to develop in response.