Hi, my name is Bassam Issa, welcome to my studio. I am a film maker and artist based between Belfast and Dublin. For this residency I will be working with artist and researcher Jennifer Mehigan.

We have been developing a collaborative project over the last 12 months that explores the mythology of Japanese knotweed, its lineage as the largest female organism on earth, and its alignment with gendered tropes of dominatrixes, goddesses, giantesses, and other dehumanised feminine bodies. We are interested in exploring this in the space between abstraction and unreality, examining the dirt, the bodies buried within it, and what they might bring to light.

I will be spending much of the residency on character design and creating CGI environments for them to inhabit. I will be posting some WIP shots of the work so please feel free to follow along 😊