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Chasing Mirrors

Chasing Mirrors was an exhibition exploring in what ways the religious text of the Quran affected the younger generation’s concept of ‘what is a portrait’?’ In considering what novel ways might be employed to address and resolve this question in relation to contemporary notions of race, identity and ethnicity, Abdu'Allah worked with the Chasing Mirrors Collective - a group of young people from Arabic-speaking youth communities in Brent, Barnet and Ealing. Across two galleries at the National Portrait Gallery, the show consisted of five large composite colour photographic portraits collaged seamlessly with twenty photographs demonstrating creative ways in which mixed-race ‘portraits’ complicated received notions of identity and ethnicity. In an adjacent space, almost opposite, there were three plasma screens that played, on a seamless loop, the ‘original’ portraits before composite re-imaging.

This exhibition ran at the National Portrait Gallery from 9 October 2009 - 10 January 2010. Accompanying the NPG exhibition, there was a photography workshop, exhibition tours and family days led by Abdu’Allah for students, community groups and families.

(See: http://www.npg.org.uk/about/press/chasing-mirrors.php). The installation followed a month residency at the National Portrait Gallery and the exhibition attracted funding from John Lyon’s Charity (£40,000). The exhibition travelled to Gallery MOMO, Johannesburg, South Africa, in July 2010: (See: http://www.gallerymomo.com/artists/faisal-abdulallah/biography/)

The artist was interviewed on:Sky News in January 2011 and in the Daily Telegraph, 2 November 2009: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/6486884/Faisal-AbduAllah.html

This World Town, November 2009: a website created by and for young people from immigrant and minority ethnic backgrounds.

And by Bárbaro Martínez‐Ruiz, Professor of African art, Aesthetics and Culture at Stanford University (captured in a published leaflet in English and Arabic and accessible at: http://www.npg.org.uk/assets/files/pdf/exhibitions/ChasingMirrors_Transcript.pdf). This led to ‘The Art of Dislocation’ retrospective exhibition at the Thomas Welton Stanford Gallery, Stanford University (28 September – 14 November 2010).