The Tank of my Sketchbook

Overview

In this animated film project, Sherko Abbas draws on his own childhood memories of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, as well as using found images and animated footage originally broadcasted on national Iraqi TV programs during the war. After a visit to London’s Imperial War Museum in 2018, Abbas was struck by the display of a Soviet-made T55 tank, which had also been captured in Iraq during the 2003 US invasion. The tank became the catalyst for him to revisit his memories of the Iran-Iraq war, which dominated his childhood. In this work, he revisits the sirens that blared at school and Iraqi state television broadcast propaganda cartoons that glorified Saddam’s war efforts.