Abbas Zahedi

Abbas Zahedi creates elegiac ruminations that are intrinsically linked to questions of diasporic agency and marginality, biopower, and surveillance capitalism. Communicated through an enduring poeticism and a distinctly multidisciplinary approach, Zahedi’s work highlights state violence and memorialises its victims. In Zahedi’s 2019 work, Dwelling: In This Space We Grieve, he used a drinks fridge, glowing incandescent green and complete with a surface transducer to transmit touch into sound, to commemorate his friend and fellow artist Khadija Saye, who died in the Grenfell Tower Fire of 2017. Initial reports alleged that the blaze was solely a result of a faulty fridge, obfuscating the institutional negligence and unsafe cladding which caused the fire to spread. The theme of fire seeps into How To Make A How From A Why? (2020), which contains a sprinkler system filled with rose water, a liquid that serves as a libation in Iranian culture and is poured on a grave to commemorate a death. In his Police Book Exchange project (2021-), the artist asks participants to donate books they would like the police to read and requests that the police do the same in response, a distinct indictment of police brutality and state complicity. ...

Public is a contemporary art gallery in East London with a diverse international programme focused on emerging artists.