Talwar Gallery is delighted to present, Elision, the first solo exhibition of Alia Syed in India. On view will be a selection of Syed’s films and photoworks. The exhibition will open on December 24th and run through March 28, 2009.
Dark and evocative, absent of time and place, Syed’s latest filmwork Priya (2008) and the photographic stills of the same name are created from 16 mm. film covered in a combination of leaves, earth and waste from her kitchen and buried in Syed’s garden. In an unexpected collaboration with nature, the stains of color produced by the film’s deterioration contribute to and erase the original scene of a lone, twirling dancer, visualizing times passed and successive memories of entombment, creating a psychological space into which the viewer may enter into the dancer’s inner ecstasy.
In Swan (1989), Syed shows her early prowess of experimentation with the moving image, evocating textures, rhythm and perspective in this cyclical black and white performance of an unwitting performer, a swan. She infuses the subject with a violent yet seductive power, underscoring the popular myth of Leda and the swan. Intimate views seduce the viewer into an uncomfortable yet rich proximity to the subject. For A Story Told, Syed creates an environment in which the story-telling is experienced in parts, condensed and expanded, moving from reality to abstraction and from the prosaic to the atmospheric. Fragments of the story are revealed in triptych, often as a direct address to camera, performed by the artist herself, a lover’s tale, in which the main character recounts the apparent impossibility of her relationship with an unidentifiable other as they travel through time.
Alia Syed is an experimental filmmaker exploring issues of identity and representation, often employing rhythmic and cyclical elements. Her interests are in story telling, time and memory. She explores the ways in which language and form both define cultural borders and extend beyond them, particularly as it occurs in the lives of those people whose personal and social boundaries have been changed by shifts in location brought about by the dispersion of peoples and cultures in the modern world.
Alia Syed was born in Swansea, Wales. The Artist has been working in experimental filmmaking for over two decades and her films have been shown at numerous institutions around the world including Performing Bodies at Tate Modern, London, UK (2000); Personal Space, at Tate Britain, London (2003); British Art Show 6, Hayward Gallery, London, UK (2005); Zones of Contact, XV Sydney Biennale, Sydney, Australia (2006). In 2002 a major retrospective of Syed’s films, Jigar, was organized by inIVA, London, UK travelling to Glasgow Museum of Modern Art (GOMA), Glasgow, Scotland, The New Art Gallery in Walsall, UK and Turnpike Gallery, Manchester, UK. The Artist currently teaches at Southampton Solent University and has also lectured at Central St. Martins (1992, 93, 97 and 2001), Glasgow School of Art (1994) and Chelsea School of Art (1996-2000).
A Solo exhibition of Alia Syed will open at Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sophia in Madrid, Spain in February 2009.
