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Night in the Garden of Love, Inspired by & featuring Yusef Lateef

10 November 2023 – 5 May 2024

Aga Khan Museum, Toronto

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Installation view, Night in the Garden of Love, Inspired by & featuring Yusef Lateef, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, 2023. Photography © Aly Manji.

Installation view, Night in the Garden of Love, Inspired by & featuring Yusef Lateef, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, 2023. Photography © Aly Manji.

Installation view, Night in the Garden of Love, Inspired by & featuring Yusef Lateef, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, 2023. Photography © Aly Manji.

Gardens — whether real or imagined — can be spaces of creation and optimism in the face of the climate crisis. Night in the Garden of Love is a multisensory exhibition by British artist Shezad Dawood, inspired by African-American Muslim musician, composer, and polymath (Allāmah) Dr. Yusef Lateef (1920 – 2013). In this multilayered exhibition, the garden serves as the starting point for a creative futuristic and intercultural conversation in which art and music can help transform the individual and the environment. Dawood sparks a transformational mindset as audiences are guided through VR, textile works, music, scent, and imagined plants that respond to digital algorithms.

Night in the Garden of Love is a dynamic conversation between Dawood and Lateef's artistic practices and philosophical approaches, inspiring visions of alternative futures through transformative creativity in a turbulent world. This call-and-response between these gifted practitioners is reminiscent of exchanges in musical improvisation. Environmentalism is positioned as a search for solutions that take place in the community and through creativity.

Step into an enthralling VR environment inspired by Lateef’s novella, listen to Lateef’s music and view his drawings, explore a stunning collection of textile paintings, and watch algorithmically generated plants flourish and sway harmoniously as they respond to a new Autophysiopsychic musical score performed by Lateef’s former collaborators and peers. Night in the Garden of Love weaves elements of fiction, virtual reality, and real-life experiences, placing you at the heart of a creative conversation between Dawood and Lateef.

Curated by: Marianne Fenton.

Produced by UBIK Productions. Co-commissioned by WIELS, Brussels and Aga Khan Museum, Toronto.

Installation view, Night in the Garden of Love, Inspired by & featuring Yusef Lateef, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, 2023. Photography © Aly Manji.

Installation view, Night in the Garden of Love, Inspired by & featuring Yusef Lateef, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, 2023. Photography © Aly Manji.

Installation view, Night in the Garden of Love, Inspired by & featuring Yusef Lateef, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, 2023. Photography © Aly Manji.

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