BL CK B X: Alia Syed

To launch LUX's new series of monthly exhibitions of artists’ moving image,BL CK B X, LUX present Alia Syed’s Wallpaper, a double screen film that was originally commissioned by the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in 2011.

Wallpaper is a performative documentary in which four generations of women in the artist’s family attempt to recreate a wallpaper design that was painted by Syed’s grandmother when the artist was a child. It features Syed, her daughter, mother, and grandmother, as well as her sister, artist-filmmaker Tanya Syed. Documenting the process in video and 16mm film, the five women take turns in the film’s technical roles (performer, director, camera operator), thus de-stabilizing the relationship between filmmaker and filmed subject, and the traditional generational hierarchy. The result is a self-reflexive and delicately layered film which deals with family, memory and subjectivity.

Wallpaper will be shown alongside other works by Syed such as Points of Departure (2014) and A Story Told (2011).

LUX