Untitled Painting

Bashar Ali is a self taught artist who was born in Baghdad, Iraq and spent his childhood growing up in a village in Algeria before finally ending in London where he now resides. He is very much attracted to how people interact with each other and the environment that they are part of; as he is continuously searching for a connection between them. It is the various political, geographical and cultural locations that have shaped his interest in trying to identify differences and commonalities in human nature and its surroundings. The work is very much driven by identity and space, be it physical, virtual or psychological as he questions what it is to have different countries that he calls homelands, what it is to be a man who is part of an online community, what it is to be an office worker, a commuter. What it is to belong to more than one land and more than one race. His current interest is a man’s identity through online communities. How does one reveal themselves through images and words that can be seen from any place in the world. He is also a novelist who continues to push the boundaries of identity through his works. Ultimately, he is searching for what it is to be an individual within an ever changing society.