Baghdad-born, Antwerp-based artist Hussein Shikha transforms digital image-making into tangible woven works. His practice draws on southern Iraqi visual culture, Shia Islamic history, and Mesopotamian mythology, creating dense, monochrome tapestries where veiled figures dissolve into flowers, calligraphy, and symmetrical patterns. Each piece begins pixel by pixel, a slow digital craft mirroring the loom's labor.

Shikha's series 'They Who Saw Nothing but Beauty' reframes martyrdom through haptic visuality, inviting slow contemplation. His work, shown at institutions like TextielMuseum and Nieuwe Instituut, carries forward ancestral narratives. By connecting the Jacquard loom's punched-card mechanism to computing's lineage, he asserts that pixels descend from threads—a profound meditation on technology entwined with tradition.