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The Camera Obscured: Photography, Film, and Moving Image at the V&A in London
With Jameel Prize 7’s theme of Moving Images, we visit five lens-based works available to view for free at the V&A South Kensington.
January 16, 2025
The best works bookend the Jameel Prize 7 exhibition; films by Alia Farid and the Iranian, UAE-based collective of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian. If I Had Two Paths I Would Choose the Third (2020) explores the making and destruction of political power through art, transforming news and media footage of the fall of Baghdad in 2003 into a ‘bestial’, surrealist carnival. It begins with Bahman Mohassess’ public sculpture for Tehran’s City Theatre, a work of Iranian modernism defaced and toppled after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Images of the sculpture, unwrapped from its storage, are here layered with histories through the artists’ style of ‘moving’ or 'fluid painting'. The film is a sort of flipbook, made from over 3000 individual pieces of paper, printed and hand-painted in turn, an analogue process of making that could sit in conversation with Nalini Malini’s digital approach to more distant, art historical pasts.
This careful practice of close looking - which can be observed in the artist's films in the space and online - is partly inspired by the philosophy of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam. However, the presence of the hand also suggests human agency and intervention, how history is not fixed but forever changing, embodied by these icons as ‘evolving entities’. ‘Neither animation nor a manifestation of iconoclasm’, the artist trio’s work comprises a critical examination of the concepts of factual history in the context of post-truth. Whilst their process creates ‘a curtain-like veil over the subject matter’, this obscurity does not conceal, but forces viewers to see the images from new perspectives. Though produced in 2020 and particular to its context, it also holds fresh relevance for those looking at the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024 and the ongoing crises in Gaza and Palestine, a thorough thread of particular interest to curator Rachel Dedman.
Morehshin Allahyari, one of the judges of this edition of the Jameel Prize, also presents a commission in the V&A’s new Photography Centre. Speculations on Capture is a film and object installation exploring stories of astronomical instruments made in Iran and Pakistan between the 1200s and 1700s, and now held in the collections of the V&A. Beyond their connections to Tehran, Allahyari, and Haerizadeh, Haerizadeh, and Rahmanian, also share an interest in cosmology; If I Had Two Paths features fantastical creatures inspired by the Aja'ib al Makhluqat (The Wonders of Creation), a 13th-century manuscript text on cosmography, alongside forms resembling bacteria, viewed as though through a microscope. These combinations of scientific fact and fiction liberate their subject matters from the conventional museum space - and Western/European collection store - for broader access and, to Allahyari’s end, to speculate alternative futures.
The museum’s archives capture only fragments of their histories and journeys, a result and reflection of the imperial logic of collection. This is refracted by the artist's handling of the objects installed behind reeded glass, often obscuring the viewers’ gaze. This subtle act blurs the boundaries between the public and the private. It is a process that, like Barbara Walker’s series of drawings, Marking the Moment, restores a sense of privacy and agency to its ‘subjects’.
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In works presently on display, more everyday lived experiences can be found in the permanent collection. Amirali Ghasemi’s Parties (2005) exposes the realities of social repression and liberation in the city of Tehran in the context of the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2007). It is captured in an image of a woman dancing with friends, her identity concealed through the overexposed shot. It creates the possibility for another private-public encounter and, in making public the act of political resistance, enhances the work’s subversive potential.
In the new Photography Centre, alongside a camera obscura proper, are recent acquisitions like Poulomi Basu’s Centralia (2010-2020). Amidst the wall-spanning series of works are many pixelated faces of members of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army in Kolkata, India. Basu self-describes as an artist-activist; their images of Martyrs, women militants killed whilst fighting, are presented alongside their histories, an effort to memorialise and humanise these soldiers.
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Still, for all a museum's potential, its collections and departments often remain siloed. Downstairs, an exhibition of Lucien Freud’s works on paper more subtly addresses these questions of visibility and presence, including a number of his cancelled prints—one subject of Glenn Ligon’s intervention at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Freud’s almost photographic eye and attention to detail are demonstrated in Self Portrait (1996) and, more interestingly, Woman with an Arm Tattoo (1996), a rare sighting, let alone focus, on sitter Sue Tilley’s body art, are several images of Leigh Bowery, soon to be celebrated with a major retrospective at Tate Modern in London. In sequence on the wall are many proofs of Reclining Figure (1994), following the plates as they are etched, repolished, and etched again to the artist’s changes.
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Zooming in on this detail, a fragment from the painting Leigh on a Green Sofa (1993) grants the viewer access to the artistic process in a manner seen previously at commercial galleries like London’s Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert. Yet the ‘final work’ is not displayed here; it is hidden in a private collection.
Freud’s etchings are displayed as evidence of his collaborative process, working with master printer Marc Balakjian at Studio Prints in London. But they are also marks of the artist’s agency and who has the power to control and represent their own narratives.
Jameel Prize 7: Moving Images is on view at the V&A South Kensington in London until 16 March 2025, and Cartwright Hall in Bradford from May 2025, part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.
Morehshin Allahyari: Speculations on Capture is on view until 23 February 2025.
Energy: Sparks from the Collection and Photography Now are on view until 18 May 2025.
Lucian Freud's Etchings: A Creative Collaboration is on view until 12 January 2025.
The best works bookend the Jameel Prize 7 exhibition; films by Alia Farid and the Iranian, UAE-based collective of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian. If I Had Two Paths I Would Choose the Third (2020) explores the making and destruction of political power through art, transforming news and media footage of the fall of Baghdad in 2003 into a ‘bestial’, surrealist carnival. It begins with Bahman Mohassess’ public sculpture for Tehran’s City Theatre, a work of Iranian modernism defaced and toppled after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Images of the sculpture, unwrapped from its storage, are here layered with histories through the artists’ style of ‘moving’ or 'fluid painting'. The film is a sort of flipbook, made from over 3000 individual pieces of paper, printed and hand-painted in turn, an analogue process of making that could sit in conversation with Nalini Malini’s digital approach to more distant, art historical pasts.
This careful practice of close looking - which can be observed in the artist's films in the space and online - is partly inspired by the philosophy of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam. However, the presence of the hand also suggests human agency and intervention, how history is not fixed but forever changing, embodied by these icons as ‘evolving entities’. ‘Neither animation nor a manifestation of iconoclasm’, the artist trio’s work comprises a critical examination of the concepts of factual history in the context of post-truth. Whilst their process creates ‘a curtain-like veil over the subject matter’, this obscurity does not conceal, but forces viewers to see the images from new perspectives. Though produced in 2020 and particular to its context, it also holds fresh relevance for those looking at the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024 and the ongoing crises in Gaza and Palestine, a thorough thread of particular interest to curator Rachel Dedman.
Morehshin Allahyari, one of the judges of this edition of the Jameel Prize, also presents a commission in the V&A’s new Photography Centre. Speculations on Capture is a film and object installation exploring stories of astronomical instruments made in Iran and Pakistan between the 1200s and 1700s, and now held in the collections of the V&A. Beyond their connections to Tehran, Allahyari, and Haerizadeh, Haerizadeh, and Rahmanian, also share an interest in cosmology; If I Had Two Paths features fantastical creatures inspired by the Aja'ib al Makhluqat (The Wonders of Creation), a 13th-century manuscript text on cosmography, alongside forms resembling bacteria, viewed as though through a microscope. These combinations of scientific fact and fiction liberate their subject matters from the conventional museum space - and Western/European collection store - for broader access and, to Allahyari’s end, to speculate alternative futures.
The museum’s archives capture only fragments of their histories and journeys, a result and reflection of the imperial logic of collection. This is refracted by the artist's handling of the objects installed behind reeded glass, often obscuring the viewers’ gaze. This subtle act blurs the boundaries between the public and the private. It is a process that, like Barbara Walker’s series of drawings, Marking the Moment, restores a sense of privacy and agency to its ‘subjects’.
In works presently on display, more everyday lived experiences can be found in the permanent collection. Amirali Ghasemi’s Parties (2005) exposes the realities of social repression and liberation in the city of Tehran in the context of the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2007). It is captured in an image of a woman dancing with friends, her identity concealed through the overexposed shot. It creates the possibility for another private-public encounter and, in making public the act of political resistance, enhances the work’s subversive potential.
In the new Photography Centre, alongside a camera obscura proper, are recent acquisitions like Poulomi Basu’s Centralia (2010-2020). Amidst the wall-spanning series of works are many pixelated faces of members of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army in Kolkata, India. Basu self-describes as an artist-activist; their images of Martyrs, women militants killed whilst fighting, are presented alongside their histories, an effort to memorialise and humanise these soldiers.
Still, for all a museum's potential, its collections and departments often remain siloed. Downstairs, an exhibition of Lucien Freud’s works on paper more subtly addresses these questions of visibility and presence, including a number of his cancelled prints—one subject of Glenn Ligon’s intervention at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Freud’s almost photographic eye and attention to detail are demonstrated in Self Portrait (1996) and, more interestingly, Woman with an Arm Tattoo (1996), a rare sighting, let alone focus, on sitter Sue Tilley’s body art, are several images of Leigh Bowery, soon to be celebrated with a major retrospective at Tate Modern in London. In sequence on the wall are many proofs of Reclining Figure (1994), following the plates as they are etched, repolished, and etched again to the artist’s changes.
Zooming in on this detail, a fragment from the painting Leigh on a Green Sofa (1993) grants the viewer access to the artistic process in a manner seen previously at commercial galleries like London’s Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert. Yet the ‘final work’ is not displayed here; it is hidden in a private collection.
Freud’s etchings are displayed as evidence of his collaborative process, working with master printer Marc Balakjian at Studio Prints in London. But they are also marks of the artist’s agency and who has the power to control and represent their own narratives.
Jameel Prize 7: Moving Images is on view at the V&A South Kensington in London until 16 March 2025, and Cartwright Hall in Bradford from May 2025, part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.
Morehshin Allahyari: Speculations on Capture is on view until 23 February 2025.
Energy: Sparks from the Collection and Photography Now are on view until 18 May 2025.
Lucian Freud's Etchings: A Creative Collaboration is on view until 12 January 2025.
The best works bookend the Jameel Prize 7 exhibition; films by Alia Farid and the Iranian, UAE-based collective of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian. If I Had Two Paths I Would Choose the Third (2020) explores the making and destruction of political power through art, transforming news and media footage of the fall of Baghdad in 2003 into a ‘bestial’, surrealist carnival. It begins with Bahman Mohassess’ public sculpture for Tehran’s City Theatre, a work of Iranian modernism defaced and toppled after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Images of the sculpture, unwrapped from its storage, are here layered with histories through the artists’ style of ‘moving’ or 'fluid painting'. The film is a sort of flipbook, made from over 3000 individual pieces of paper, printed and hand-painted in turn, an analogue process of making that could sit in conversation with Nalini Malini’s digital approach to more distant, art historical pasts.
This careful practice of close looking - which can be observed in the artist's films in the space and online - is partly inspired by the philosophy of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam. However, the presence of the hand also suggests human agency and intervention, how history is not fixed but forever changing, embodied by these icons as ‘evolving entities’. ‘Neither animation nor a manifestation of iconoclasm’, the artist trio’s work comprises a critical examination of the concepts of factual history in the context of post-truth. Whilst their process creates ‘a curtain-like veil over the subject matter’, this obscurity does not conceal, but forces viewers to see the images from new perspectives. Though produced in 2020 and particular to its context, it also holds fresh relevance for those looking at the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024 and the ongoing crises in Gaza and Palestine, a thorough thread of particular interest to curator Rachel Dedman.
Morehshin Allahyari, one of the judges of this edition of the Jameel Prize, also presents a commission in the V&A’s new Photography Centre. Speculations on Capture is a film and object installation exploring stories of astronomical instruments made in Iran and Pakistan between the 1200s and 1700s, and now held in the collections of the V&A. Beyond their connections to Tehran, Allahyari, and Haerizadeh, Haerizadeh, and Rahmanian, also share an interest in cosmology; If I Had Two Paths features fantastical creatures inspired by the Aja'ib al Makhluqat (The Wonders of Creation), a 13th-century manuscript text on cosmography, alongside forms resembling bacteria, viewed as though through a microscope. These combinations of scientific fact and fiction liberate their subject matters from the conventional museum space - and Western/European collection store - for broader access and, to Allahyari’s end, to speculate alternative futures.
The museum’s archives capture only fragments of their histories and journeys, a result and reflection of the imperial logic of collection. This is refracted by the artist's handling of the objects installed behind reeded glass, often obscuring the viewers’ gaze. This subtle act blurs the boundaries between the public and the private. It is a process that, like Barbara Walker’s series of drawings, Marking the Moment, restores a sense of privacy and agency to its ‘subjects’.
In works presently on display, more everyday lived experiences can be found in the permanent collection. Amirali Ghasemi’s Parties (2005) exposes the realities of social repression and liberation in the city of Tehran in the context of the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2007). It is captured in an image of a woman dancing with friends, her identity concealed through the overexposed shot. It creates the possibility for another private-public encounter and, in making public the act of political resistance, enhances the work’s subversive potential.
In the new Photography Centre, alongside a camera obscura proper, are recent acquisitions like Poulomi Basu’s Centralia (2010-2020). Amidst the wall-spanning series of works are many pixelated faces of members of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army in Kolkata, India. Basu self-describes as an artist-activist; their images of Martyrs, women militants killed whilst fighting, are presented alongside their histories, an effort to memorialise and humanise these soldiers.
Still, for all a museum's potential, its collections and departments often remain siloed. Downstairs, an exhibition of Lucien Freud’s works on paper more subtly addresses these questions of visibility and presence, including a number of his cancelled prints—one subject of Glenn Ligon’s intervention at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Freud’s almost photographic eye and attention to detail are demonstrated in Self Portrait (1996) and, more interestingly, Woman with an Arm Tattoo (1996), a rare sighting, let alone focus, on sitter Sue Tilley’s body art, are several images of Leigh Bowery, soon to be celebrated with a major retrospective at Tate Modern in London. In sequence on the wall are many proofs of Reclining Figure (1994), following the plates as they are etched, repolished, and etched again to the artist’s changes.
Zooming in on this detail, a fragment from the painting Leigh on a Green Sofa (1993) grants the viewer access to the artistic process in a manner seen previously at commercial galleries like London’s Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert. Yet the ‘final work’ is not displayed here; it is hidden in a private collection.
Freud’s etchings are displayed as evidence of his collaborative process, working with master printer Marc Balakjian at Studio Prints in London. But they are also marks of the artist’s agency and who has the power to control and represent their own narratives.
Jameel Prize 7: Moving Images is on view at the V&A South Kensington in London until 16 March 2025, and Cartwright Hall in Bradford from May 2025, part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.
Morehshin Allahyari: Speculations on Capture is on view until 23 February 2025.
Energy: Sparks from the Collection and Photography Now are on view until 18 May 2025.
Lucian Freud's Etchings: A Creative Collaboration is on view until 12 January 2025.
The best works bookend the Jameel Prize 7 exhibition; films by Alia Farid and the Iranian, UAE-based collective of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian. If I Had Two Paths I Would Choose the Third (2020) explores the making and destruction of political power through art, transforming news and media footage of the fall of Baghdad in 2003 into a ‘bestial’, surrealist carnival. It begins with Bahman Mohassess’ public sculpture for Tehran’s City Theatre, a work of Iranian modernism defaced and toppled after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Images of the sculpture, unwrapped from its storage, are here layered with histories through the artists’ style of ‘moving’ or 'fluid painting'. The film is a sort of flipbook, made from over 3000 individual pieces of paper, printed and hand-painted in turn, an analogue process of making that could sit in conversation with Nalini Malini’s digital approach to more distant, art historical pasts.
This careful practice of close looking - which can be observed in the artist's films in the space and online - is partly inspired by the philosophy of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam. However, the presence of the hand also suggests human agency and intervention, how history is not fixed but forever changing, embodied by these icons as ‘evolving entities’. ‘Neither animation nor a manifestation of iconoclasm’, the artist trio’s work comprises a critical examination of the concepts of factual history in the context of post-truth. Whilst their process creates ‘a curtain-like veil over the subject matter’, this obscurity does not conceal, but forces viewers to see the images from new perspectives. Though produced in 2020 and particular to its context, it also holds fresh relevance for those looking at the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024 and the ongoing crises in Gaza and Palestine, a thorough thread of particular interest to curator Rachel Dedman.
Morehshin Allahyari, one of the judges of this edition of the Jameel Prize, also presents a commission in the V&A’s new Photography Centre. Speculations on Capture is a film and object installation exploring stories of astronomical instruments made in Iran and Pakistan between the 1200s and 1700s, and now held in the collections of the V&A. Beyond their connections to Tehran, Allahyari, and Haerizadeh, Haerizadeh, and Rahmanian, also share an interest in cosmology; If I Had Two Paths features fantastical creatures inspired by the Aja'ib al Makhluqat (The Wonders of Creation), a 13th-century manuscript text on cosmography, alongside forms resembling bacteria, viewed as though through a microscope. These combinations of scientific fact and fiction liberate their subject matters from the conventional museum space - and Western/European collection store - for broader access and, to Allahyari’s end, to speculate alternative futures.
The museum’s archives capture only fragments of their histories and journeys, a result and reflection of the imperial logic of collection. This is refracted by the artist's handling of the objects installed behind reeded glass, often obscuring the viewers’ gaze. This subtle act blurs the boundaries between the public and the private. It is a process that, like Barbara Walker’s series of drawings, Marking the Moment, restores a sense of privacy and agency to its ‘subjects’.
In works presently on display, more everyday lived experiences can be found in the permanent collection. Amirali Ghasemi’s Parties (2005) exposes the realities of social repression and liberation in the city of Tehran in the context of the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2007). It is captured in an image of a woman dancing with friends, her identity concealed through the overexposed shot. It creates the possibility for another private-public encounter and, in making public the act of political resistance, enhances the work’s subversive potential.
In the new Photography Centre, alongside a camera obscura proper, are recent acquisitions like Poulomi Basu’s Centralia (2010-2020). Amidst the wall-spanning series of works are many pixelated faces of members of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army in Kolkata, India. Basu self-describes as an artist-activist; their images of Martyrs, women militants killed whilst fighting, are presented alongside their histories, an effort to memorialise and humanise these soldiers.
Still, for all a museum's potential, its collections and departments often remain siloed. Downstairs, an exhibition of Lucien Freud’s works on paper more subtly addresses these questions of visibility and presence, including a number of his cancelled prints—one subject of Glenn Ligon’s intervention at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Freud’s almost photographic eye and attention to detail are demonstrated in Self Portrait (1996) and, more interestingly, Woman with an Arm Tattoo (1996), a rare sighting, let alone focus, on sitter Sue Tilley’s body art, are several images of Leigh Bowery, soon to be celebrated with a major retrospective at Tate Modern in London. In sequence on the wall are many proofs of Reclining Figure (1994), following the plates as they are etched, repolished, and etched again to the artist’s changes.
Zooming in on this detail, a fragment from the painting Leigh on a Green Sofa (1993) grants the viewer access to the artistic process in a manner seen previously at commercial galleries like London’s Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert. Yet the ‘final work’ is not displayed here; it is hidden in a private collection.
Freud’s etchings are displayed as evidence of his collaborative process, working with master printer Marc Balakjian at Studio Prints in London. But they are also marks of the artist’s agency and who has the power to control and represent their own narratives.
Jameel Prize 7: Moving Images is on view at the V&A South Kensington in London until 16 March 2025, and Cartwright Hall in Bradford from May 2025, part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.
Morehshin Allahyari: Speculations on Capture is on view until 23 February 2025.
Energy: Sparks from the Collection and Photography Now are on view until 18 May 2025.
Lucian Freud's Etchings: A Creative Collaboration is on view until 12 January 2025.
The best works bookend the Jameel Prize 7 exhibition; films by Alia Farid and the Iranian, UAE-based collective of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian. If I Had Two Paths I Would Choose the Third (2020) explores the making and destruction of political power through art, transforming news and media footage of the fall of Baghdad in 2003 into a ‘bestial’, surrealist carnival. It begins with Bahman Mohassess’ public sculpture for Tehran’s City Theatre, a work of Iranian modernism defaced and toppled after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Images of the sculpture, unwrapped from its storage, are here layered with histories through the artists’ style of ‘moving’ or 'fluid painting'. The film is a sort of flipbook, made from over 3000 individual pieces of paper, printed and hand-painted in turn, an analogue process of making that could sit in conversation with Nalini Malini’s digital approach to more distant, art historical pasts.
This careful practice of close looking - which can be observed in the artist's films in the space and online - is partly inspired by the philosophy of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam. However, the presence of the hand also suggests human agency and intervention, how history is not fixed but forever changing, embodied by these icons as ‘evolving entities’. ‘Neither animation nor a manifestation of iconoclasm’, the artist trio’s work comprises a critical examination of the concepts of factual history in the context of post-truth. Whilst their process creates ‘a curtain-like veil over the subject matter’, this obscurity does not conceal, but forces viewers to see the images from new perspectives. Though produced in 2020 and particular to its context, it also holds fresh relevance for those looking at the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024 and the ongoing crises in Gaza and Palestine, a thorough thread of particular interest to curator Rachel Dedman.
Morehshin Allahyari, one of the judges of this edition of the Jameel Prize, also presents a commission in the V&A’s new Photography Centre. Speculations on Capture is a film and object installation exploring stories of astronomical instruments made in Iran and Pakistan between the 1200s and 1700s, and now held in the collections of the V&A. Beyond their connections to Tehran, Allahyari, and Haerizadeh, Haerizadeh, and Rahmanian, also share an interest in cosmology; If I Had Two Paths features fantastical creatures inspired by the Aja'ib al Makhluqat (The Wonders of Creation), a 13th-century manuscript text on cosmography, alongside forms resembling bacteria, viewed as though through a microscope. These combinations of scientific fact and fiction liberate their subject matters from the conventional museum space - and Western/European collection store - for broader access and, to Allahyari’s end, to speculate alternative futures.
The museum’s archives capture only fragments of their histories and journeys, a result and reflection of the imperial logic of collection. This is refracted by the artist's handling of the objects installed behind reeded glass, often obscuring the viewers’ gaze. This subtle act blurs the boundaries between the public and the private. It is a process that, like Barbara Walker’s series of drawings, Marking the Moment, restores a sense of privacy and agency to its ‘subjects’.
In works presently on display, more everyday lived experiences can be found in the permanent collection. Amirali Ghasemi’s Parties (2005) exposes the realities of social repression and liberation in the city of Tehran in the context of the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2007). It is captured in an image of a woman dancing with friends, her identity concealed through the overexposed shot. It creates the possibility for another private-public encounter and, in making public the act of political resistance, enhances the work’s subversive potential.
In the new Photography Centre, alongside a camera obscura proper, are recent acquisitions like Poulomi Basu’s Centralia (2010-2020). Amidst the wall-spanning series of works are many pixelated faces of members of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army in Kolkata, India. Basu self-describes as an artist-activist; their images of Martyrs, women militants killed whilst fighting, are presented alongside their histories, an effort to memorialise and humanise these soldiers.
Still, for all a museum's potential, its collections and departments often remain siloed. Downstairs, an exhibition of Lucien Freud’s works on paper more subtly addresses these questions of visibility and presence, including a number of his cancelled prints—one subject of Glenn Ligon’s intervention at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Freud’s almost photographic eye and attention to detail are demonstrated in Self Portrait (1996) and, more interestingly, Woman with an Arm Tattoo (1996), a rare sighting, let alone focus, on sitter Sue Tilley’s body art, are several images of Leigh Bowery, soon to be celebrated with a major retrospective at Tate Modern in London. In sequence on the wall are many proofs of Reclining Figure (1994), following the plates as they are etched, repolished, and etched again to the artist’s changes.
Zooming in on this detail, a fragment from the painting Leigh on a Green Sofa (1993) grants the viewer access to the artistic process in a manner seen previously at commercial galleries like London’s Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert. Yet the ‘final work’ is not displayed here; it is hidden in a private collection.
Freud’s etchings are displayed as evidence of his collaborative process, working with master printer Marc Balakjian at Studio Prints in London. But they are also marks of the artist’s agency and who has the power to control and represent their own narratives.
Jameel Prize 7: Moving Images is on view at the V&A South Kensington in London until 16 March 2025, and Cartwright Hall in Bradford from May 2025, part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.
Morehshin Allahyari: Speculations on Capture is on view until 23 February 2025.
Energy: Sparks from the Collection and Photography Now are on view until 18 May 2025.
Lucian Freud's Etchings: A Creative Collaboration is on view until 12 January 2025.
The best works bookend the Jameel Prize 7 exhibition; films by Alia Farid and the Iranian, UAE-based collective of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian. If I Had Two Paths I Would Choose the Third (2020) explores the making and destruction of political power through art, transforming news and media footage of the fall of Baghdad in 2003 into a ‘bestial’, surrealist carnival. It begins with Bahman Mohassess’ public sculpture for Tehran’s City Theatre, a work of Iranian modernism defaced and toppled after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Images of the sculpture, unwrapped from its storage, are here layered with histories through the artists’ style of ‘moving’ or 'fluid painting'. The film is a sort of flipbook, made from over 3000 individual pieces of paper, printed and hand-painted in turn, an analogue process of making that could sit in conversation with Nalini Malini’s digital approach to more distant, art historical pasts.
This careful practice of close looking - which can be observed in the artist's films in the space and online - is partly inspired by the philosophy of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam. However, the presence of the hand also suggests human agency and intervention, how history is not fixed but forever changing, embodied by these icons as ‘evolving entities’. ‘Neither animation nor a manifestation of iconoclasm’, the artist trio’s work comprises a critical examination of the concepts of factual history in the context of post-truth. Whilst their process creates ‘a curtain-like veil over the subject matter’, this obscurity does not conceal, but forces viewers to see the images from new perspectives. Though produced in 2020 and particular to its context, it also holds fresh relevance for those looking at the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024 and the ongoing crises in Gaza and Palestine, a thorough thread of particular interest to curator Rachel Dedman.
Morehshin Allahyari, one of the judges of this edition of the Jameel Prize, also presents a commission in the V&A’s new Photography Centre. Speculations on Capture is a film and object installation exploring stories of astronomical instruments made in Iran and Pakistan between the 1200s and 1700s, and now held in the collections of the V&A. Beyond their connections to Tehran, Allahyari, and Haerizadeh, Haerizadeh, and Rahmanian, also share an interest in cosmology; If I Had Two Paths features fantastical creatures inspired by the Aja'ib al Makhluqat (The Wonders of Creation), a 13th-century manuscript text on cosmography, alongside forms resembling bacteria, viewed as though through a microscope. These combinations of scientific fact and fiction liberate their subject matters from the conventional museum space - and Western/European collection store - for broader access and, to Allahyari’s end, to speculate alternative futures.
The museum’s archives capture only fragments of their histories and journeys, a result and reflection of the imperial logic of collection. This is refracted by the artist's handling of the objects installed behind reeded glass, often obscuring the viewers’ gaze. This subtle act blurs the boundaries between the public and the private. It is a process that, like Barbara Walker’s series of drawings, Marking the Moment, restores a sense of privacy and agency to its ‘subjects’.
In works presently on display, more everyday lived experiences can be found in the permanent collection. Amirali Ghasemi’s Parties (2005) exposes the realities of social repression and liberation in the city of Tehran in the context of the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2007). It is captured in an image of a woman dancing with friends, her identity concealed through the overexposed shot. It creates the possibility for another private-public encounter and, in making public the act of political resistance, enhances the work’s subversive potential.
In the new Photography Centre, alongside a camera obscura proper, are recent acquisitions like Poulomi Basu’s Centralia (2010-2020). Amidst the wall-spanning series of works are many pixelated faces of members of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army in Kolkata, India. Basu self-describes as an artist-activist; their images of Martyrs, women militants killed whilst fighting, are presented alongside their histories, an effort to memorialise and humanise these soldiers.
Still, for all a museum's potential, its collections and departments often remain siloed. Downstairs, an exhibition of Lucien Freud’s works on paper more subtly addresses these questions of visibility and presence, including a number of his cancelled prints—one subject of Glenn Ligon’s intervention at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Freud’s almost photographic eye and attention to detail are demonstrated in Self Portrait (1996) and, more interestingly, Woman with an Arm Tattoo (1996), a rare sighting, let alone focus, on sitter Sue Tilley’s body art, are several images of Leigh Bowery, soon to be celebrated with a major retrospective at Tate Modern in London. In sequence on the wall are many proofs of Reclining Figure (1994), following the plates as they are etched, repolished, and etched again to the artist’s changes.
Zooming in on this detail, a fragment from the painting Leigh on a Green Sofa (1993) grants the viewer access to the artistic process in a manner seen previously at commercial galleries like London’s Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert. Yet the ‘final work’ is not displayed here; it is hidden in a private collection.
Freud’s etchings are displayed as evidence of his collaborative process, working with master printer Marc Balakjian at Studio Prints in London. But they are also marks of the artist’s agency and who has the power to control and represent their own narratives.
Jameel Prize 7: Moving Images is on view at the V&A South Kensington in London until 16 March 2025, and Cartwright Hall in Bradford from May 2025, part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.
Morehshin Allahyari: Speculations on Capture is on view until 23 February 2025.
Energy: Sparks from the Collection and Photography Now are on view until 18 May 2025.
Lucian Freud's Etchings: A Creative Collaboration is on view until 12 January 2025.
The best works bookend the Jameel Prize 7 exhibition; films by Alia Farid and the Iranian, UAE-based collective of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian. If I Had Two Paths I Would Choose the Third (2020) explores the making and destruction of political power through art, transforming news and media footage of the fall of Baghdad in 2003 into a ‘bestial’, surrealist carnival. It begins with Bahman Mohassess’ public sculpture for Tehran’s City Theatre, a work of Iranian modernism defaced and toppled after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Images of the sculpture, unwrapped from its storage, are here layered with histories through the artists’ style of ‘moving’ or 'fluid painting'. The film is a sort of flipbook, made from over 3000 individual pieces of paper, printed and hand-painted in turn, an analogue process of making that could sit in conversation with Nalini Malini’s digital approach to more distant, art historical pasts.
This careful practice of close looking - which can be observed in the artist's films in the space and online - is partly inspired by the philosophy of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam. However, the presence of the hand also suggests human agency and intervention, how history is not fixed but forever changing, embodied by these icons as ‘evolving entities’. ‘Neither animation nor a manifestation of iconoclasm’, the artist trio’s work comprises a critical examination of the concepts of factual history in the context of post-truth. Whilst their process creates ‘a curtain-like veil over the subject matter’, this obscurity does not conceal, but forces viewers to see the images from new perspectives. Though produced in 2020 and particular to its context, it also holds fresh relevance for those looking at the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024 and the ongoing crises in Gaza and Palestine, a thorough thread of particular interest to curator Rachel Dedman.
Morehshin Allahyari, one of the judges of this edition of the Jameel Prize, also presents a commission in the V&A’s new Photography Centre. Speculations on Capture is a film and object installation exploring stories of astronomical instruments made in Iran and Pakistan between the 1200s and 1700s, and now held in the collections of the V&A. Beyond their connections to Tehran, Allahyari, and Haerizadeh, Haerizadeh, and Rahmanian, also share an interest in cosmology; If I Had Two Paths features fantastical creatures inspired by the Aja'ib al Makhluqat (The Wonders of Creation), a 13th-century manuscript text on cosmography, alongside forms resembling bacteria, viewed as though through a microscope. These combinations of scientific fact and fiction liberate their subject matters from the conventional museum space - and Western/European collection store - for broader access and, to Allahyari’s end, to speculate alternative futures.
The museum’s archives capture only fragments of their histories and journeys, a result and reflection of the imperial logic of collection. This is refracted by the artist's handling of the objects installed behind reeded glass, often obscuring the viewers’ gaze. This subtle act blurs the boundaries between the public and the private. It is a process that, like Barbara Walker’s series of drawings, Marking the Moment, restores a sense of privacy and agency to its ‘subjects’.
In works presently on display, more everyday lived experiences can be found in the permanent collection. Amirali Ghasemi’s Parties (2005) exposes the realities of social repression and liberation in the city of Tehran in the context of the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2007). It is captured in an image of a woman dancing with friends, her identity concealed through the overexposed shot. It creates the possibility for another private-public encounter and, in making public the act of political resistance, enhances the work’s subversive potential.
In the new Photography Centre, alongside a camera obscura proper, are recent acquisitions like Poulomi Basu’s Centralia (2010-2020). Amidst the wall-spanning series of works are many pixelated faces of members of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army in Kolkata, India. Basu self-describes as an artist-activist; their images of Martyrs, women militants killed whilst fighting, are presented alongside their histories, an effort to memorialise and humanise these soldiers.
Still, for all a museum's potential, its collections and departments often remain siloed. Downstairs, an exhibition of Lucien Freud’s works on paper more subtly addresses these questions of visibility and presence, including a number of his cancelled prints—one subject of Glenn Ligon’s intervention at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Freud’s almost photographic eye and attention to detail are demonstrated in Self Portrait (1996) and, more interestingly, Woman with an Arm Tattoo (1996), a rare sighting, let alone focus, on sitter Sue Tilley’s body art, are several images of Leigh Bowery, soon to be celebrated with a major retrospective at Tate Modern in London. In sequence on the wall are many proofs of Reclining Figure (1994), following the plates as they are etched, repolished, and etched again to the artist’s changes.
Zooming in on this detail, a fragment from the painting Leigh on a Green Sofa (1993) grants the viewer access to the artistic process in a manner seen previously at commercial galleries like London’s Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert. Yet the ‘final work’ is not displayed here; it is hidden in a private collection.
Freud’s etchings are displayed as evidence of his collaborative process, working with master printer Marc Balakjian at Studio Prints in London. But they are also marks of the artist’s agency and who has the power to control and represent their own narratives.
Jameel Prize 7: Moving Images is on view at the V&A South Kensington in London until 16 March 2025, and Cartwright Hall in Bradford from May 2025, part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.
Morehshin Allahyari: Speculations on Capture is on view until 23 February 2025.
Energy: Sparks from the Collection and Photography Now are on view until 18 May 2025.
Lucian Freud's Etchings: A Creative Collaboration is on view until 12 January 2025.
The best works bookend the Jameel Prize 7 exhibition; films by Alia Farid and the Iranian, UAE-based collective of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian. If I Had Two Paths I Would Choose the Third (2020) explores the making and destruction of political power through art, transforming news and media footage of the fall of Baghdad in 2003 into a ‘bestial’, surrealist carnival. It begins with Bahman Mohassess’ public sculpture for Tehran’s City Theatre, a work of Iranian modernism defaced and toppled after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Images of the sculpture, unwrapped from its storage, are here layered with histories through the artists’ style of ‘moving’ or 'fluid painting'. The film is a sort of flipbook, made from over 3000 individual pieces of paper, printed and hand-painted in turn, an analogue process of making that could sit in conversation with Nalini Malini’s digital approach to more distant, art historical pasts.
This careful practice of close looking - which can be observed in the artist's films in the space and online - is partly inspired by the philosophy of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam. However, the presence of the hand also suggests human agency and intervention, how history is not fixed but forever changing, embodied by these icons as ‘evolving entities’. ‘Neither animation nor a manifestation of iconoclasm’, the artist trio’s work comprises a critical examination of the concepts of factual history in the context of post-truth. Whilst their process creates ‘a curtain-like veil over the subject matter’, this obscurity does not conceal, but forces viewers to see the images from new perspectives. Though produced in 2020 and particular to its context, it also holds fresh relevance for those looking at the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024 and the ongoing crises in Gaza and Palestine, a thorough thread of particular interest to curator Rachel Dedman.
Morehshin Allahyari, one of the judges of this edition of the Jameel Prize, also presents a commission in the V&A’s new Photography Centre. Speculations on Capture is a film and object installation exploring stories of astronomical instruments made in Iran and Pakistan between the 1200s and 1700s, and now held in the collections of the V&A. Beyond their connections to Tehran, Allahyari, and Haerizadeh, Haerizadeh, and Rahmanian, also share an interest in cosmology; If I Had Two Paths features fantastical creatures inspired by the Aja'ib al Makhluqat (The Wonders of Creation), a 13th-century manuscript text on cosmography, alongside forms resembling bacteria, viewed as though through a microscope. These combinations of scientific fact and fiction liberate their subject matters from the conventional museum space - and Western/European collection store - for broader access and, to Allahyari’s end, to speculate alternative futures.
The museum’s archives capture only fragments of their histories and journeys, a result and reflection of the imperial logic of collection. This is refracted by the artist's handling of the objects installed behind reeded glass, often obscuring the viewers’ gaze. This subtle act blurs the boundaries between the public and the private. It is a process that, like Barbara Walker’s series of drawings, Marking the Moment, restores a sense of privacy and agency to its ‘subjects’.
In works presently on display, more everyday lived experiences can be found in the permanent collection. Amirali Ghasemi’s Parties (2005) exposes the realities of social repression and liberation in the city of Tehran in the context of the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2007). It is captured in an image of a woman dancing with friends, her identity concealed through the overexposed shot. It creates the possibility for another private-public encounter and, in making public the act of political resistance, enhances the work’s subversive potential.
In the new Photography Centre, alongside a camera obscura proper, are recent acquisitions like Poulomi Basu’s Centralia (2010-2020). Amidst the wall-spanning series of works are many pixelated faces of members of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army in Kolkata, India. Basu self-describes as an artist-activist; their images of Martyrs, women militants killed whilst fighting, are presented alongside their histories, an effort to memorialise and humanise these soldiers.
Still, for all a museum's potential, its collections and departments often remain siloed. Downstairs, an exhibition of Lucien Freud’s works on paper more subtly addresses these questions of visibility and presence, including a number of his cancelled prints—one subject of Glenn Ligon’s intervention at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Freud’s almost photographic eye and attention to detail are demonstrated in Self Portrait (1996) and, more interestingly, Woman with an Arm Tattoo (1996), a rare sighting, let alone focus, on sitter Sue Tilley’s body art, are several images of Leigh Bowery, soon to be celebrated with a major retrospective at Tate Modern in London. In sequence on the wall are many proofs of Reclining Figure (1994), following the plates as they are etched, repolished, and etched again to the artist’s changes.
Zooming in on this detail, a fragment from the painting Leigh on a Green Sofa (1993) grants the viewer access to the artistic process in a manner seen previously at commercial galleries like London’s Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert. Yet the ‘final work’ is not displayed here; it is hidden in a private collection.
Freud’s etchings are displayed as evidence of his collaborative process, working with master printer Marc Balakjian at Studio Prints in London. But they are also marks of the artist’s agency and who has the power to control and represent their own narratives.
Jameel Prize 7: Moving Images is on view at the V&A South Kensington in London until 16 March 2025, and Cartwright Hall in Bradford from May 2025, part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.
Morehshin Allahyari: Speculations on Capture is on view until 23 February 2025.
Energy: Sparks from the Collection and Photography Now are on view until 18 May 2025.
Lucian Freud's Etchings: A Creative Collaboration is on view until 12 January 2025.
The best works bookend the Jameel Prize 7 exhibition; films by Alia Farid and the Iranian, UAE-based collective of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian. If I Had Two Paths I Would Choose the Third (2020) explores the making and destruction of political power through art, transforming news and media footage of the fall of Baghdad in 2003 into a ‘bestial’, surrealist carnival. It begins with Bahman Mohassess’ public sculpture for Tehran’s City Theatre, a work of Iranian modernism defaced and toppled after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Images of the sculpture, unwrapped from its storage, are here layered with histories through the artists’ style of ‘moving’ or 'fluid painting'. The film is a sort of flipbook, made from over 3000 individual pieces of paper, printed and hand-painted in turn, an analogue process of making that could sit in conversation with Nalini Malini’s digital approach to more distant, art historical pasts.
This careful practice of close looking - which can be observed in the artist's films in the space and online - is partly inspired by the philosophy of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam. However, the presence of the hand also suggests human agency and intervention, how history is not fixed but forever changing, embodied by these icons as ‘evolving entities’. ‘Neither animation nor a manifestation of iconoclasm’, the artist trio’s work comprises a critical examination of the concepts of factual history in the context of post-truth. Whilst their process creates ‘a curtain-like veil over the subject matter’, this obscurity does not conceal, but forces viewers to see the images from new perspectives. Though produced in 2020 and particular to its context, it also holds fresh relevance for those looking at the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024 and the ongoing crises in Gaza and Palestine, a thorough thread of particular interest to curator Rachel Dedman.
Morehshin Allahyari, one of the judges of this edition of the Jameel Prize, also presents a commission in the V&A’s new Photography Centre. Speculations on Capture is a film and object installation exploring stories of astronomical instruments made in Iran and Pakistan between the 1200s and 1700s, and now held in the collections of the V&A. Beyond their connections to Tehran, Allahyari, and Haerizadeh, Haerizadeh, and Rahmanian, also share an interest in cosmology; If I Had Two Paths features fantastical creatures inspired by the Aja'ib al Makhluqat (The Wonders of Creation), a 13th-century manuscript text on cosmography, alongside forms resembling bacteria, viewed as though through a microscope. These combinations of scientific fact and fiction liberate their subject matters from the conventional museum space - and Western/European collection store - for broader access and, to Allahyari’s end, to speculate alternative futures.
The museum’s archives capture only fragments of their histories and journeys, a result and reflection of the imperial logic of collection. This is refracted by the artist's handling of the objects installed behind reeded glass, often obscuring the viewers’ gaze. This subtle act blurs the boundaries between the public and the private. It is a process that, like Barbara Walker’s series of drawings, Marking the Moment, restores a sense of privacy and agency to its ‘subjects’.
In works presently on display, more everyday lived experiences can be found in the permanent collection. Amirali Ghasemi’s Parties (2005) exposes the realities of social repression and liberation in the city of Tehran in the context of the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2007). It is captured in an image of a woman dancing with friends, her identity concealed through the overexposed shot. It creates the possibility for another private-public encounter and, in making public the act of political resistance, enhances the work’s subversive potential.
In the new Photography Centre, alongside a camera obscura proper, are recent acquisitions like Poulomi Basu’s Centralia (2010-2020). Amidst the wall-spanning series of works are many pixelated faces of members of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army in Kolkata, India. Basu self-describes as an artist-activist; their images of Martyrs, women militants killed whilst fighting, are presented alongside their histories, an effort to memorialise and humanise these soldiers.
Still, for all a museum's potential, its collections and departments often remain siloed. Downstairs, an exhibition of Lucien Freud’s works on paper more subtly addresses these questions of visibility and presence, including a number of his cancelled prints—one subject of Glenn Ligon’s intervention at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Freud’s almost photographic eye and attention to detail are demonstrated in Self Portrait (1996) and, more interestingly, Woman with an Arm Tattoo (1996), a rare sighting, let alone focus, on sitter Sue Tilley’s body art, are several images of Leigh Bowery, soon to be celebrated with a major retrospective at Tate Modern in London. In sequence on the wall are many proofs of Reclining Figure (1994), following the plates as they are etched, repolished, and etched again to the artist’s changes.
Zooming in on this detail, a fragment from the painting Leigh on a Green Sofa (1993) grants the viewer access to the artistic process in a manner seen previously at commercial galleries like London’s Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert. Yet the ‘final work’ is not displayed here; it is hidden in a private collection.
Freud’s etchings are displayed as evidence of his collaborative process, working with master printer Marc Balakjian at Studio Prints in London. But they are also marks of the artist’s agency and who has the power to control and represent their own narratives.
Jameel Prize 7: Moving Images is on view at the V&A South Kensington in London until 16 March 2025, and Cartwright Hall in Bradford from May 2025, part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.
Morehshin Allahyari: Speculations on Capture is on view until 23 February 2025.
Energy: Sparks from the Collection and Photography Now are on view until 18 May 2025.
Lucian Freud's Etchings: A Creative Collaboration is on view until 12 January 2025.
The best works bookend the Jameel Prize 7 exhibition; films by Alia Farid and the Iranian, UAE-based collective of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian. If I Had Two Paths I Would Choose the Third (2020) explores the making and destruction of political power through art, transforming news and media footage of the fall of Baghdad in 2003 into a ‘bestial’, surrealist carnival. It begins with Bahman Mohassess’ public sculpture for Tehran’s City Theatre, a work of Iranian modernism defaced and toppled after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Images of the sculpture, unwrapped from its storage, are here layered with histories through the artists’ style of ‘moving’ or 'fluid painting'. The film is a sort of flipbook, made from over 3000 individual pieces of paper, printed and hand-painted in turn, an analogue process of making that could sit in conversation with Nalini Malini’s digital approach to more distant, art historical pasts.
This careful practice of close looking - which can be observed in the artist's films in the space and online - is partly inspired by the philosophy of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam. However, the presence of the hand also suggests human agency and intervention, how history is not fixed but forever changing, embodied by these icons as ‘evolving entities’. ‘Neither animation nor a manifestation of iconoclasm’, the artist trio’s work comprises a critical examination of the concepts of factual history in the context of post-truth. Whilst their process creates ‘a curtain-like veil over the subject matter’, this obscurity does not conceal, but forces viewers to see the images from new perspectives. Though produced in 2020 and particular to its context, it also holds fresh relevance for those looking at the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024 and the ongoing crises in Gaza and Palestine, a thorough thread of particular interest to curator Rachel Dedman.
Morehshin Allahyari, one of the judges of this edition of the Jameel Prize, also presents a commission in the V&A’s new Photography Centre. Speculations on Capture is a film and object installation exploring stories of astronomical instruments made in Iran and Pakistan between the 1200s and 1700s, and now held in the collections of the V&A. Beyond their connections to Tehran, Allahyari, and Haerizadeh, Haerizadeh, and Rahmanian, also share an interest in cosmology; If I Had Two Paths features fantastical creatures inspired by the Aja'ib al Makhluqat (The Wonders of Creation), a 13th-century manuscript text on cosmography, alongside forms resembling bacteria, viewed as though through a microscope. These combinations of scientific fact and fiction liberate their subject matters from the conventional museum space - and Western/European collection store - for broader access and, to Allahyari’s end, to speculate alternative futures.
The museum’s archives capture only fragments of their histories and journeys, a result and reflection of the imperial logic of collection. This is refracted by the artist's handling of the objects installed behind reeded glass, often obscuring the viewers’ gaze. This subtle act blurs the boundaries between the public and the private. It is a process that, like Barbara Walker’s series of drawings, Marking the Moment, restores a sense of privacy and agency to its ‘subjects’.
In works presently on display, more everyday lived experiences can be found in the permanent collection. Amirali Ghasemi’s Parties (2005) exposes the realities of social repression and liberation in the city of Tehran in the context of the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2007). It is captured in an image of a woman dancing with friends, her identity concealed through the overexposed shot. It creates the possibility for another private-public encounter and, in making public the act of political resistance, enhances the work’s subversive potential.
In the new Photography Centre, alongside a camera obscura proper, are recent acquisitions like Poulomi Basu’s Centralia (2010-2020). Amidst the wall-spanning series of works are many pixelated faces of members of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army in Kolkata, India. Basu self-describes as an artist-activist; their images of Martyrs, women militants killed whilst fighting, are presented alongside their histories, an effort to memorialise and humanise these soldiers.
Still, for all a museum's potential, its collections and departments often remain siloed. Downstairs, an exhibition of Lucien Freud’s works on paper more subtly addresses these questions of visibility and presence, including a number of his cancelled prints—one subject of Glenn Ligon’s intervention at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Freud’s almost photographic eye and attention to detail are demonstrated in Self Portrait (1996) and, more interestingly, Woman with an Arm Tattoo (1996), a rare sighting, let alone focus, on sitter Sue Tilley’s body art, are several images of Leigh Bowery, soon to be celebrated with a major retrospective at Tate Modern in London. In sequence on the wall are many proofs of Reclining Figure (1994), following the plates as they are etched, repolished, and etched again to the artist’s changes.
Zooming in on this detail, a fragment from the painting Leigh on a Green Sofa (1993) grants the viewer access to the artistic process in a manner seen previously at commercial galleries like London’s Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert. Yet the ‘final work’ is not displayed here; it is hidden in a private collection.
Freud’s etchings are displayed as evidence of his collaborative process, working with master printer Marc Balakjian at Studio Prints in London. But they are also marks of the artist’s agency and who has the power to control and represent their own narratives.
Jameel Prize 7: Moving Images is on view at the V&A South Kensington in London until 16 March 2025, and Cartwright Hall in Bradford from May 2025, part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.
Morehshin Allahyari: Speculations on Capture is on view until 23 February 2025.
Energy: Sparks from the Collection and Photography Now are on view until 18 May 2025.
Lucian Freud's Etchings: A Creative Collaboration is on view until 12 January 2025.
The best works bookend the Jameel Prize 7 exhibition; films by Alia Farid and the Iranian, UAE-based collective of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian. If I Had Two Paths I Would Choose the Third (2020) explores the making and destruction of political power through art, transforming news and media footage of the fall of Baghdad in 2003 into a ‘bestial’, surrealist carnival. It begins with Bahman Mohassess’ public sculpture for Tehran’s City Theatre, a work of Iranian modernism defaced and toppled after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Images of the sculpture, unwrapped from its storage, are here layered with histories through the artists’ style of ‘moving’ or 'fluid painting'. The film is a sort of flipbook, made from over 3000 individual pieces of paper, printed and hand-painted in turn, an analogue process of making that could sit in conversation with Nalini Malini’s digital approach to more distant, art historical pasts.
This careful practice of close looking - which can be observed in the artist's films in the space and online - is partly inspired by the philosophy of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam. However, the presence of the hand also suggests human agency and intervention, how history is not fixed but forever changing, embodied by these icons as ‘evolving entities’. ‘Neither animation nor a manifestation of iconoclasm’, the artist trio’s work comprises a critical examination of the concepts of factual history in the context of post-truth. Whilst their process creates ‘a curtain-like veil over the subject matter’, this obscurity does not conceal, but forces viewers to see the images from new perspectives. Though produced in 2020 and particular to its context, it also holds fresh relevance for those looking at the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024 and the ongoing crises in Gaza and Palestine, a thorough thread of particular interest to curator Rachel Dedman.
Morehshin Allahyari, one of the judges of this edition of the Jameel Prize, also presents a commission in the V&A’s new Photography Centre. Speculations on Capture is a film and object installation exploring stories of astronomical instruments made in Iran and Pakistan between the 1200s and 1700s, and now held in the collections of the V&A. Beyond their connections to Tehran, Allahyari, and Haerizadeh, Haerizadeh, and Rahmanian, also share an interest in cosmology; If I Had Two Paths features fantastical creatures inspired by the Aja'ib al Makhluqat (The Wonders of Creation), a 13th-century manuscript text on cosmography, alongside forms resembling bacteria, viewed as though through a microscope. These combinations of scientific fact and fiction liberate their subject matters from the conventional museum space - and Western/European collection store - for broader access and, to Allahyari’s end, to speculate alternative futures.
The museum’s archives capture only fragments of their histories and journeys, a result and reflection of the imperial logic of collection. This is refracted by the artist's handling of the objects installed behind reeded glass, often obscuring the viewers’ gaze. This subtle act blurs the boundaries between the public and the private. It is a process that, like Barbara Walker’s series of drawings, Marking the Moment, restores a sense of privacy and agency to its ‘subjects’.
In works presently on display, more everyday lived experiences can be found in the permanent collection. Amirali Ghasemi’s Parties (2005) exposes the realities of social repression and liberation in the city of Tehran in the context of the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2007). It is captured in an image of a woman dancing with friends, her identity concealed through the overexposed shot. It creates the possibility for another private-public encounter and, in making public the act of political resistance, enhances the work’s subversive potential.
In the new Photography Centre, alongside a camera obscura proper, are recent acquisitions like Poulomi Basu’s Centralia (2010-2020). Amidst the wall-spanning series of works are many pixelated faces of members of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army in Kolkata, India. Basu self-describes as an artist-activist; their images of Martyrs, women militants killed whilst fighting, are presented alongside their histories, an effort to memorialise and humanise these soldiers.
Still, for all a museum's potential, its collections and departments often remain siloed. Downstairs, an exhibition of Lucien Freud’s works on paper more subtly addresses these questions of visibility and presence, including a number of his cancelled prints—one subject of Glenn Ligon’s intervention at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Freud’s almost photographic eye and attention to detail are demonstrated in Self Portrait (1996) and, more interestingly, Woman with an Arm Tattoo (1996), a rare sighting, let alone focus, on sitter Sue Tilley’s body art, are several images of Leigh Bowery, soon to be celebrated with a major retrospective at Tate Modern in London. In sequence on the wall are many proofs of Reclining Figure (1994), following the plates as they are etched, repolished, and etched again to the artist’s changes.
Zooming in on this detail, a fragment from the painting Leigh on a Green Sofa (1993) grants the viewer access to the artistic process in a manner seen previously at commercial galleries like London’s Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert. Yet the ‘final work’ is not displayed here; it is hidden in a private collection.
Freud’s etchings are displayed as evidence of his collaborative process, working with master printer Marc Balakjian at Studio Prints in London. But they are also marks of the artist’s agency and who has the power to control and represent their own narratives.
Jameel Prize 7: Moving Images is on view at the V&A South Kensington in London until 16 March 2025, and Cartwright Hall in Bradford from May 2025, part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.
Morehshin Allahyari: Speculations on Capture is on view until 23 February 2025.
Energy: Sparks from the Collection and Photography Now are on view until 18 May 2025.
Lucian Freud's Etchings: A Creative Collaboration is on view until 12 January 2025.
