Dawood, Shezad
Shezad Dawood works across film, textiles, print, painting and sculpture to explore how different systems of language, site and narrative can exist within and between these forms. His work often involves collaboration and is particularly concerned with acts of editing and re-staging.
Spacewar!, 2019, is a tapestry depicting the video game Defender (launched 1981). Living in Karachi, Pakistan in the 1980s the artist would raid his grandmother’s handbag for change to spend at the local arcade. It was later that Dawood considered how games like Defender and Space Invaders, which are fundamentally about territorial integrity, were flooding Pakistan across a similar timeline to Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s coup in 1977 and the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
- Artwork Details: 159 x 116cm
- Edition: 2 of 3 + 1 AP
- Material description: Tapestry in teak artist's frame
- Credit line: © the artist. Image courtesy of the artist and Timothy Taylor, London
- Theme:
- Medium: Print
- Accession number: ACC23/2020