Viewing Shirin Neshat and Sarah Brahim: Cartographies of Presence at Albion Jeune

Shirin Neshat and Sarah Brahim present a dual exhibition at Albion Jeune – opening Saturday – a dialogue around their parallel practices and their ongoing concerns for the intersection of the personal and the political. Spanning film, photography, performance and poetry, the exhibition explores the artists’ shared focus on the body as a “language of memory, ritual and defiance”.

Award-winning Neshat is known for her iconic black and white films, often unfolding in barren landscapes and centring around female protagonists in search of something – highly charged and poetic, Iranian-born Neshat, who has lived in the US since the 1970s, has reinvented the idea of Islamic art. Brahim belongs to a different generation. Born in 1992 in Riyadh, she trained as a dancer in the US and the UK. Her performances and immersive video works are rooted in the bodily, physical experience, a perfect pairing with Neshat’s works, in which the body becomes a site of protest, solidarity and resistance.

The exhibition will include Neshat’s iconic 2001 film, Passage, and a newly commissioned film and photography work by Brahim, In Search of An Honest Map.