‘I Love Ancient Baby (2023) by Jala Wahid (*1988, lives in London) is a videowork that delves into the idea that time and feelings are cyclical, passed down through generations and embodied in the artefacts we find. Images of Kurdish artefacts found in museums around the world are presented against a pumping soundtrack and hot-pink background with phrases and text written over a succession of images. The images include playing cards handed out to American soldiers during the invasion of Iraq which featured monuments that they had been instructed to avoid destroying.
A second section changes tone, becoming intimate, with text recalling a dream encounter some years previously with the artist’s father who passed away before making the film. Here the objects serve a different purpose; to suggest that time perhaps is not linear, that the past remains alive in the present, and the possibility that those lost could be reincarnated through these artefacts. That notion is heightened by Wahid’s reference to a second family member, her then unborn child, whose anticipated presence echoes the rebirth of hidden artefacts through contemporary iterations.
The final section of the film brings us back to those sculptures, brought to life through colour, texture and movement. Filled with multiple possible new meanings, they are finally freed from endlessly repeating the violence of the colonial encounter.’
Country of production: UK
Year of production: 2023
Director and writer: Jala Wahid
Cinematography: Taina Galis and Jala Wahid
Music: Owen Pratt
Editing: Taina Galis and Jala Wahid
Camera: Liran Barlev and Taina Galis
Digital Imaging Technician: Liran Barlev
Colourist: Philipp Morozov
Runner: Kreev Raoof
Special thanks to: Xila Ramzi
Screening dates:
Jala Wahid, I Love Ancient Baby, 2023; 13 minutes, 34 seconds
7 October – 28 October 2024
© Jala Wahid. Courtesy of the artist and Niru Ratnam, London
About the artist:
Jala Wahid works across sculpture, film, sound and installation. Her work is rooted in archival research into colonial and diasporic history and politics from a Kurdish perspective. Her objects and films articulate the emotive politics and complexity of contested histories. Deliberately choosing a sensual, alluring and even delirious aesthetic, she embraces the theatrical, in part to offer a counter-narrative to the coloniser’s account, in part to celebrate an identity that refuses to be erased. Employing the emotive potential of material, music, dance and theatre, her work looks to the poetic within politics. She is interested in the complexities of nationalism, history, iconography and methods of archiving and existence.
Jala Wahid lives and works in London. She received her BA from Goldsmiths College, London, and her PgDip in Fine Art at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Recent exhibitions include solo institutional shows at GAK Bremen (2023), Tramway, Glasgow (2023), Kunstverein Freiburg (2023) and BALTIC (2022-23). She has also had solo exhibitions at CAS Batumi, Georgia (2021) and Two Queens, Leicester (2022) and been in group exhibitions at Centre for Contemporary Arts Goldsmiths (2022); SculptureCenter, New York (2019); Nottingham Contemporary (2019) and Arnolfini, Bristol (2019).
