Playful Disruption: Remixing Archives & Pop Culture With Meme Artist Abdullah Al Jahdhami (@shaweesh_)

We explore the power and potency of memes in today's society with Abdullah Al Jahdhami, known online as @shaweesh_, an artist who contributed to the Memememememe at the media majlis museum. Al Jahdhami discusses his artistic practice, which involves disrupting and remixing historical and archival imagery, often by inserting pop culture icons to open a new dialogue. He shares the story behind his famous artwork of Yoda with King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, an image that ended up in a Saudi nationalism textbook. The artist explains how he uses these archival materials to question what shapes the identity of his generation and how his work, though joyful and funny, encourages people to understand why they are laughing. Al Jahdhami also touches on his process of repatriating historical objects by buying them back from eBay, and his latest works, which use original animation cels to combine Arab childhood memories of dubbed cartoons with scenes from the Gulf War. The conversation closes wit...