Artist statement

Hussein Shikha’s practice moves through design, art, and research engages with complex symbologies that reflect his heritage and family history through equally complex pixel drawings. His practice functions as a manipulated Beautiful recollection rooted in his PlayStation Memory Card and personal lived experiences, operating as a digital iteration of an emotional atemporality. His work entails experimental film, animation, textile and interactive installations. Hussein takes the manipulation and transformation of the southern Iraqi carpet (with all its philosophies) as a starting point to understand visual arts from Eastern and non-Eastern perspectives, employing mnemonic associations, refrential to spiritual signifiers reaffirming his own inherited ways of knowing and doing. Using pixellation as a tool to present a fragmented reality that needs to be experienced in its fragmentation, through repetition, variation, and interconnected forms. Rather than following a linear narrative, it searches for meaning through heightened dispersed associations, inviting viewers into moments of reflection, recognition, and spiritual resonance. Pixelation becomes both a visual signifier and philosophical tool that fragments, encodes, and eludes clarity, echoing traditions of concealment found in Islamic art.

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. Shikha’s work has been showcased at Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam; BAK, Utrecht; KIOSK, Ghent; and Kunsthal Extra City, Antwerp. He has participated in residencies at Frans Masereel Centrum; Z33, Hasselt; and Morpho, Antwerp. In 2025, he received the POMONA Art Fund Grant, awarded by SOFAM and the King Baudouin Foundation.

Full portfolio available upon request.

Education

2021 – 2022 • Advanced Master: Master of Research in Art and Design, Sint Lucas, Antwerp (BE)
2019 – 2021 • Master with greatest distinction – Visual arts, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp (BE)
2016 – 2019 • Bachelor with greatest distinction – Visual arts, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp (BE)

 Awards, grants & honors

2026 Honorary Mention, Interactive Art — Ars Electronica
2025 POMONA Art Fund Grant — SOFAM and the King Baudouin Foundation
2024 Fonds Nieuwe Makers — Stad Antwerpen
2023 Grant for Emerging Talent — Flemish Government (Arts & Heritage Department)

Residencies

2026 • Research residency, DeFabriek, Eindhoven (NL)
2026 •  Development residency, Moussem, Brussels (BE)
2025 •  Research residency, Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (NL)
2025 •  ON_OFF_SPACE, De Singel, Antwerp (BE)
2022 •  Development residency, Morpho, Antwerp (BE)
2022 •  Writing residency, Ponton, Z33, Hasselt (BE)
2021 •  Collective residency, Frans Masereel Centrum, Antwerp (BE)
2021 •  Vruchtbare Grond residency, Het Bos, Antwerp (BE)

Exhibitions (selection)

2024 • Flag #7, Cas-co, Leuven (BE)
2024 • Periphery, Extra City, Antwerp (BE)
2024 • Open Space, Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam (NL)
2024 • A Chimera Memorial, E.A. Shared Space, Tbilisi (GE)
2024 • Soft Activism, Lottozero, Prato (IT)
2024 • Secrets of Making, Textile Museum, Tilburg (NL)
2024 • Grains of Sand Like Mountains, Kunsthal, Ghent (BE)
2023 • Carpetland; Critical Tapestries, Extra City, Antwerp (BE)
2023 • Ultradependent Public School, BAK, Utrecht (NL)
2023 • Tashattot Collective, KIOSK, Ghent (BE)
2023 • Trading Love, De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam (NL)
2023 • Doha Prints exhibition, Studio 7, Doha (QAT)
2022 • Antwerp Queer Arts Festival, Extra City, Antwerp (BE)
2022 • Here instead of around, Morpho, Antwerp (BE)
2022 • (un)common grounds, iMal, Brussels (BE)
2022 • ال/no*, WARAQ, Lebanon (LB)