Far from an accurate representation of the war, Swiss-born Dubai-based Samawi said his videos attempt to convey the way it's being experienced by the Arab diaspora.
Dubai's Ayyam Gallery recently held a fundraising exhibition featuring Sami Samawi's AI-generated videos of the war in Gaza. Proceeds from sales of limited edition prints derived from the exhibition, Their Voices, Our Dreams, are going to children in Gaza via The Little Wings Foundation.
Some scenes are sentimental, showing children sitting among fruit looking out over rubble, as if Anne Geddes were a war photographer. Others, depicting pumpkin-shaped tanks, for example, are surreal, reminiscent of paintings by Tetsuya Ishida. We asked Samawi about this unusual, contentious approach.
With so much misinformation being shared during Israel's attack on Gaza, did you have any reservations about using AI to generate images? Is there a concern that they undermine the brutal reality?
Firstly, the aim was not to depict the war itself in a literal sense, but rather to convey the experience of the Arab diaspora. Many of us have engaged with the conflict through digital media, fragmentarily and from a distance. The surreal AI imagery mirrors this mediated experience—it's another layer of digital interpretation, just as our understanding is shaped by the snippets of war we see online.