Skip to content

Night in the Garden of Love (VR), 2023

VR environment, duration variable

Click here for more information about Dawood's exhibition Night in the Garden of Love, Inspired by & featuring Yusef Lateef, WIELS, Brussels.

Still from Night in the Garden of Love (VR), 2023.

Still from Night in the Garden of Love (VR), 2023.

Still from Night in the Garden of Love (VR), 2023.

A new 2-player VR environment launched as part of Shezad Dawood's exhibition titled Night in the Garden of Love after Lateef’s 1988 novella. The exhibition features music and a selection of drawings by Lateef together with five new, interconnected works by Dawood.

Two visitors at a time can wear VR head-sets to enter a virtual reality experience, riffing on scenes from Lateef’s novella. A key figure is the Mutant, who moves through the script like a dancer, guiding visitors through Lateef’s vision, as re-imagined by Dawood. The soundtrack features original recordings by Lateef released on his own label, YAL Records. This is the first time Dawood has created a dual-player VR experience, to underscore the idea of a garden as a space for intimacy and dialogue.

Dawood sees this exhibition as a dialogue between his practice and Lateef’s, like the call-and-response exchanges in musical improvisation. Dawood considers Lateef’s novella to be a forerunner of much recent cli-fi: sci-fi exploring climate issues. “There are all sorts of portals within Lateef’s novella, which moves from a dystopian future Detroit, into radical ideas of ecology and recycling,” he states. Dawood is interested in technology for its transformative potential to help us imagine new forms of togetherness. “It is meant to be an almost metaphysical space, but I read Lateef’s garden as a virtual space.”

Curated by Zoë Gray & Helena Kritis.

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

Click here to view a trailer.

Written and directed by: Shezad Dawood

Produced by: Miranda Sharp

Coders & 3D design: Monochrome

Mutant dancer: Wan-Lun Yu

Tracks: Daydream, Phase Transition, Instrumental Ritornello #1, Monadic Adventure, Instrumental Gospel, Saturday Morning, all tracks composed by Yusef Lateef for YAL Records and published by Spirit One Music Crescendo obo Alnur Music (BMI)

Musical trio: Mia Theodoratus (harp), Adam Rudolph (slit drum), Ralph Miles Jones (bamboo flute)

Voices: Ilham Tamet (Arabic & French), Huan Mus (Portuguese), Batya Sobel, Gwen Laster and Ralph Miles Jones (English)

Film footage: Robbrecht Desmet, Ruben Desiere, Lennert De Taeye

Related

Night in the Garden
2024
HD video, 61'45"
Night in the Garden of Love, Inspired by & featuring Yusef Lateef
2023—2024
Aga Khan Museum, Toronto
Night in the Garden of Love, Inspired by & featuring Yusef Lateef
2023
WIELS, Brussels
Ambiguous Relationships
2023
Acrylic on vintage textile hanging, 204 × 153 cm
Blue
2023
Acrylic on vintage textile hanging, 190 × 130 cm
Brugmansia
2023
Acrylic on vintage textile hanging, 176 × 130 cm
In the Garden
2023
Triptych, acrylic and print on vintage textile, 212 × 452 cm
Lion's Foot Dancer
2023
Acrylic on vintage textile hanging, 198 × 138 cm
Mutant Dancer
2023
Shezad Dawood × Ahluwalia
Mutant Dancer
2023
Acrylic on vintage textile hanging, 174 × 157 cm
Night in the Garden of Love (Digital Seedbanks)
2023
Digital work, 7 algorithmically generated plants responding to a new music score, 01:56:00
Osteospermum
2023
Acrylic on vintage textile hanging, 203 × 145 cm
Passiflora
2023
Acrylic on vintage textile hanging, 185 × 155 cm
The Tree Ascendsss
2023
Acrylic on vintage textile hanging, 193 × 136 cm
The Wind Howls
2023
Acrylic on vintage textile hanging, 200 × 142 cm
Tree of Many Colours
2023
Acrylic on vintage textile hanging, 183 × 129 cm
Wishbone Flower 1
2023
Acrylic on vintage textile hanging, 204 × 150 cm
Wishbone Flower 2
2023
Acrylic on vintage textile hanging, 210 × 139 cm
Xyloflor
2023
Ceramic vase and scent