Shezad Dawood: Towards The Possible Film

This exhibition, Shezad Dawood’s first solo show in a London institution, comprises recently executed light sculptures, an installation of large-scale paintings on textile, and two films, one of which, Towards the Possible Film, gives its title to the exhibition and is having its UK premiere here at Parasol unit.

Towards the Possible Film, 2014, was shot at Legzira beach in Sidi Ifni, Morocco. In a landscape that could well be an alien planet, otherworldly figures appear as if to threaten the peace. Dawood found a deep source of inspiration in the region’s history and the many wars fought in the 1950s and ’60s between Spain, Morocco and the independent Saharan tribes. In contrast, A Mystery Play, 2010, was filmed in a monumental and elaborate, early twentieth-century, Masonic building in Winnipeg, Canada. This film is inspired not only by Masonic rituals, but also by the town’s history, renowned for its extensive culture of performance and burlesque, in particular the shows of Buster Keaton and Harry Houdini.