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Leviathan

28 November 2023 – 3 February 2024

Salisbury Cathedral

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Installation view, Leviathan, Salisbury Cathedral, Salisbury, 2023. Photography © Finnbarr Webster.

Installation view, Leviathan, Salisbury Cathedral, Salisbury, 2023. Photography © Finnbarr Webster.

Installation view, Leviathan, Salisbury Cathedral, Salisbury, 2023. Photography © Finnbarr Webster.

Installation view, Leviathan, Salisbury Cathedral, Salisbury, 2023. Photography © Finnbarr Webster.

Leviathan, a solo exhibition by Shezad Dawood, explores the intersection between migration, mental health, and climate change. With paintings, textiles, video and sculpture, this thought-provoking exhibition offers an opportunity to reflect on the pressing global challenges of our time, all within the breathtaking setting of Salisbury Cathedral.

Central to the exhibition is are a series of powerfully affecting textile paintings from the Labanof Cycle, 2017, which depict objects lost at sea by migrants attempting to make the Lampedusa crossing between North Africa and southern Italy. These objects form part of the much larger archive of the Labanof (Laboratory of Anthropological Forensics) at the University of Milan, a unit of forensic pathologists who archive these objects in order to help families track missing relatives. As such, each textile documents both a life and a journey, and the loss that accompanies both. The combination of the imagery and the Fortuny fabric on which they are painted reveals the fault lines and some of the contradictions at the heart of our contemporary ecosystem.

In the South Nave Aisle, AnthropoPangaea (Hapalochlaena lunulata), 2022, a large textile work, depicts a map of the world that draws the viewer back in geological time to a point when there was a supercontinent, Pangaea, surrounded by a global ocean, Panthalassa. It was inspired by Richard Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion maps, a flat map which shows our planet as one island in one ocean. The term 'AnthropoPangaea (Hapalochlaena lunulata)' was invented by the artist: it references the Anthropocene (the period of geological time in which human activity has had a significant impact on the planet), the modernist Brazilian poet and critic Oswald de Andrade's manifesto of cultural cannibalism and the supercontinent Pangaea which once encompassed all the landmasses on Earth. Hand painted by Dawood, with rug- hooking and tufting crafted by artisans from Fogo Island, Newfoundland, Canada, Lillian Dwyer and Sheila Paine, whom Dawood met while in residence at Fogo Islands Arts in 2019. Dawood hand-painted elements such ass the striking, highly venomous blue-ringed octopus which delves into geological time to imagine a joined-up world made of hybrid landscapes help in a tentacular embrace.

In the Audley Chapel, a small sculpture of a whale, Leviathan, 2017, uses the central allegory of Herman Melville's Moby Dick to encapsulate the tension between man and nature. Inspired by images from John Huston's film adaptation, the sculpture discusses the challenging relationship between human and the sea, ecologically, physically and philosophically.

Other works in the exhibition include the latest two films from Dawood's ambitious ten-part Leviathan Cycle, 2017-ongoing, which are set in a future world eerily like our own, just after a cataclysmic solar event has occurred. Episode 7: Africana, Ken Bugul & Nemo, 2022 and Episode 8: Cris, Sandra, Papa & Yasmine, 2023 take a viewer on a journey through the mangroves of Senegal and the Atlantic Forest in Brazil respectively, blending fact and speculative fiction, narrative, indigenous knowledge and documentary. Written from the point of view of recurring characters Nemo and Yasmine, the films explore the ways in which all beings and the earth are connected, and look beyond the environmental, physical and psychological challenges we currently face to consider new strategies for working and living together.

Located in the Chapter House, Where do we go now?, 2017, is a polychromatic painted sculpture inspired by the engravings and illustrations from Jonathan Swift's 1704 pamphlet, A Tale of a Tub, which in itself was a response to Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. While there are many ways to interpret this satirical piece of writing, the artist suggests the following: that the whale representing the beast of State, threatens to destroy the vessel of right relationship and community, prompting the sailors aboard to throw overboard a barrel (or 'tub') representing their labour (or 'capital') to distract it. Some of the figures in the boat are 18th century sailors, but an equal number are their contemporary counterparts: two migrants attempting to make the crossing and a UN rescue worker in protective clothing.

Curated by Beth Hughes.

Installation view, Leviathan, Salisbury Cathedral, Salisbury, 2023. Photography © Finnbarr Webster.

Installation view, Leviathan, Salisbury Cathedral, Salisbury, 2023. Photography © Finnbarr Webster.

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