Soul of the Soul
West Space’s new exhibition, Soul of the Soul / rūḥ al-rūḥ – jan-e janān, brings together artists Elyas Alavi, Ayman Kaake, Ali Tahayori, and Kia Zand, each of whom draws on a deeply personal history as a migrant to Australia and as a queer practitioner negotiating identity, visibility, and belonging. Their works speak to the experience of otherness, where cultural heritage and queer subjectivity intersect to shape how they see the world and how the world sees them.
Coming from the Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) regions, the artists have spent 18 months in dialogue, exchanging testimonies of migration, memory, and the search for selfhood across shifting cultural and political landscapes. The exhibition is informed by the constant awareness of what has been left behind; homes, communities, and geographies marked by loss, survival, and resilience. Within this context, the works foreground not only narratives of displacement and endurance, but also an insistence on love: love that transcends the self and entwines with resistance.
Soul of the Soul / rūḥ al-rūḥ – jan-e janān runs from November 15, 2025, to January 31, 2026.
Image credit: AYMAN KAAKE, Testing the Water, 2025. Projection on sheer fabric, one video channel, 10 minutes and 37 seconds. Courtesy of the artist.
