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Elyas Alavia

Elyas Alavi is a visual artist, curator and poet. Expressed in poetry, painting, installation, performance and moving image, Alavi’s practice examines themes of identity and representation through the complex intersections of race, displacement, gender, religion, and sexuality. Born in Daikundi province, Afghanistan, Alavi moved to Iran as a child following the intensification of war in his homeland.

‘It turns into a new language’: Saaro Umar in conversation with Elyas Alavi

And once you’ve gone, you can’t come back anymore. The almost-end of an exchange that comes close to passages between James Baldwin’s David and Giovanni; here between the voice of Magaye Niang and Marène Niang, as she glides naked across thick Alaskan snow, breasts upwards, the foreground close to the colour of the sky, she replies, I think I’ve already heard this song.

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