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Waylon Jennings famously sang that, "Cowboys ain't easy to love and they're harder to hold." Yet that truism hasn't kept the world from chasing after the myth of the American cowboy, trying to wrangle it into some comprehensible form, and seeking to explain how it has shaped the most profound elements of American identity.

In recent shows at London's Paradise Row and Dubai's The Third Line gallery, London-born and -based artist Shezad Dawood has swung a lasso around legendary Wild West iconography and pulled the image of the cowboy into the present day and our contemporary conflicts. In "If I should fall from grace with God," his first major London solo show, Dawood combined neon signs incorporating the Koran's concept of the "99 Names of God" with tumbleweeds, a symbol of the American Wild West. Around the glowing sculptures were expressionistic paintings of cowboys, slain wild-life and other images of rural American, all painted on black velvet and hung in vintage frames. Religion may dominate international discussions about the Iraq war, but "If I should fall from grace with God" approaches the conflict from an arguably more interesting and nuanced angle. Dawood employs religious references, but he does not pit one faith against another or even position Eastern religion in opposition to Western secularism. Instead he juxtaposes two deeply ingrained sets of beliefs, the precepts of the Muslim Middle East versus the cinematic myth of America's Wild West.

Born in England to a father from India, and a mother from Pakistan, Dawood's background is typical example of London's diversity. In his art, Dawood splices and samples apparently incongruous cultural references. But his juxtapositions are ultimately not merely jarring ones. Instead, they prove to be enlightening illustrations of the kind of cross-cultural pop cross-pollination that now exemplifies our common global culture. For example, one work from his 2002 film poster series was an oil painting presenting a version of the iconic cinema poster staged in downtown Karachi which added text in a mixture of English and Urdu. In another image from the series, he transplanted the classic signature park scene from 'Blow-up' to Karachi.

The result of these cultural collisions is a disorienting but thought-provoking set of contrasts. Dawood's work engaging America's myths highlights profound pressure points as the world tries to understand America's place in the world and its self-appointed relationship to the ideal of "manifest destiny."

Here we discuss America's reality, its mythology and whether an artist outside the vast, diverse and internally contradictory United States can offer credible insights into America's true character.

AFH: Is there one film that you think best articulates America's core cultural identity?

SD: The Searchers, with its troubled and fractured identity, with John Wayne as Ethan, and another 'white' actor playing the renegade Indian 'Scar' - who performs as his psychic doppelganger. This problematic relationship to itself means that for me this is the quintessentially revealing American Western.

AFH: Do you perceive that the most salient split in America is still between white John Wayne characters and the non-white Americans represented by "Scar"?

SD: Hardly. I see that psychological fault-line as a much bigger split or pathology in humanity as a whole. A fragmentation of the ego-complex that results in the delusion that there is a "Scar". I think it becomes important to start to look at it in broader terms, and as a form of mental distortion that we still crave 'otherness'. This is the greatest challenge for us as a species at the moment, and yes it has almost been a wasted opportunity of the US's stewardship of the world that more hasn't been done to practically encourage humanity down this route.

AFH: How or why do you think America could have led the world toward greater awareness of xenophobia and misguided divisions?

SD: America and Americans are a very relaxed and big-hearted people. This could and should have been at the fore-front of their international relations, rather than the vested interests of specific lobbies - actually a very small minority.

AFH: Are you advocating a 'melting pot' idea of racial and cultural harmony? Do you think political and cultural sensitivity soothes or exacerbates tensions between different groups?

SD: I'm not sure that I'd advocate a melting pot idea of racial/cultural harmony; other people's utopias leave me a bit cold. However one of the reasons I live in London is that I'm not big on monocultures - and by that I mean India/Pakistan as much as some cities in Europe. Similarly I'm a bit wary of political/cultural sensitivity, as it implies political and cultural insensitivity, and therefore I see it as the other side of the same coin. I'd rather be left alone to go about my business and my interests, without regard to perceived sensitivities.

AFH: In "The Searchers," Wayne's character is an embittered veteran of the Civil War, who had fought for the Confederacy and lets that trauma guide his actions and reactions. Do you see this movie from 1956, which pre-dates Vietnam and obviously Iraq, being particularly relevant to today's America? Or do you see these conflicted aspects of American identity as relatively consistent in the country's cultural history?

SD: My answer to your question about 'Scar' relates here. And in response to the second part of your question, I would go on to say that it is these inner conflicts that need to be honestly faced and resolved, and expediently for all nations to see past their own noses. On an individual psychological level, someone in the same predicament would be viewed as pathologically self-obsessed and dissociated from others. This lack of community spirit is an inward & outward political failing.

AFH: Have you traveled much in the US?

SD: A fair amount.

AFH: Are there huge differences between the states? Where have you spent the most time?

SD: Texas, NYC and California, and my oldest friend from school (a half-Welsh, half-Indian son of a Brahmin) was living in Miami for a number of years, so we drove around every hick-town in Southern Florida. I have a great love for Texas, having spent a lot of time there as a kid, I love the landscape and the people, and love any excuse to go there and get in a car. I was last there a couple of years ago researching my new film work : 'Feature', a kind of zombie-western, relocated to the peaceful Cambridgeshire countryside in the East of England. I like to mess with locations.

AFH: Does your experience in the US have any impact on your work dealing with American cultural myths?

SD: Just means they sit a bit in my body, rather than merely coming to them cold.

AFH: Do you feel that the British press accurately represents America and its political concerns?

SD: Ha, no but I don't feel the press anywhere I've come across really does a job of representing anything or anyone accurately. You might almost see its function as mediation by design, a clever fictionalizing of the world in perpetuity!

AFH: What is the source of your interest in American culture?

SD: Many things. The exotic appeal of American comic books and films as an immigrant child growing up in 1970s England. An early visit to a Native American reservation, and my identification with a boy my age (5 years old) - my aunt lived in Houston at the time. Also a fascination with my dad's time at college in the US in the 60s - he was a photographer, and was friendly with a lot the bands popular then. We were just hanging out with Jorma Kaukonen & Jack Casady (formerly of Jefferson Airplane), performing as Hot Tuna in Brescia, Italy a couple of summer's ago. And by extension in a history of Bluegrass music, and of course the myths and distortions surrounding various histories of the American West.

AFH: What kind of work did your Dad make as a photographer?

SD: He did a lot of music photography and some reportage. I have some of his old archive including photographs of psychedelic 'happenings' with the Jefferson Airplane, Cream playing live, anti-Vietnam protests, lots of good stuff.

AFH: How does your work relate to other English artists, like Poppy de Villeneuve or Suky Best & Rory Hamilton, who also are interested in the myth of the Wild West?

SD: It's very hard to really know where someone's work is coming from, but I think it is doing something very different. There is a radically idealistic universalizing basis to my work, which I think gives me the temerity to rewrite and reconcile superficially different cultural elements and ideologies, which I feel gives my work something quite unique and compelling.

AFH: Where you interested in the myth of the Wild West before the Bush administration reinvigorated investigations into its continuous significance?

SD: For me it goes back to Columbus' mistake, relating my ancestry by proxy to indigenous peoples everywhere; I sometimes wonder if (although used reductively) this is not a positive assertion.

AFH: You've mentioned that you'd had a crush on Molly Ringwald? What was that about?

SD: Her decision to go from 'the Breakfast Club' to acting in French arthouse movies gave her a mystique that only added to my boyhood crush. Although I'm more attracted to Natalie Portman these days.

AFH: Did you know Nathalie Portman dated the son of two incarcerated Weathermen?

SD: No I didn't, but it certainly adds to the appeal.

AFH: Do you get feedback from people from vastly different cultural and ideological backgrounds or are you mostly showing to a predominantly white art-world audience?

SD: I have shown in China, the Middle East, and other parts of Asia. But yes, my core audience is predominantly European. Years of immigration make this understandable, as my work tends to play between traditional boundaries of culture, medium and genre.

AFH: How differently do people in different cultural contexts respond to your work?

SD: I see my work as an ongoing conversation, so it's as much a case of how I respond to the people I encounter - I see this as an ongoing test of my ability as an artist.

AFH: What was the reaction to 'Until the End of the World' in Dubai?

SD: Very positive, but perhaps less interested in certain aspects of the work as opposed to others. A learning curve that I hope to build on.

AFH: Are you optimistic or skeptical about Dubai and its place in the world's future?

SD: I think Dubai's a really interesting experiment, and it will certainly be interesting to see how it develops.

Shezad Dawood's latest film entitled 'Feature' was made at the Wysing Arts Centre, as a residency project, and will be on view at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, Aug 7-Sept 21; and The Eastside Projects, Birmingham, Sept 26-Nov 1. It will also feature in the Tate Triennial.