“Paradise”
Tarik Ahlip
18 Mar → 1 May 2022

A film is projected on the gallery wall, with two speakers at either side of the image and chairs placed in front. The film still shows
Tarik Ahlip, ‘Paradise’, 2022, single channel moving image, 18 min, installation view: West Space, Collingwood Yards, 2022. Photography by Janelle Low.

West Space is proud to present the first short film by Tarik Ahlip. Paradise reflects on a formative space, a Mosque in Canberra.

Paradise is a meditation on ritual, the religious strictures around the act of killing for sustenance, and the migrant act of reinvention. The film considers the ethical imprint of a theologically inflected worldview, and post-Enlightenment epistemologies.

A house of the people.
A house of eschatological visions.
The visions overlap.
The industry of the Monaro and the lamb that will be sacrificed.
The silence of the plains.
The silence of the forest after burning.
Baz Amadam
(I am back again).

Read Anna Emina El Samad's Inherited Memory.

This project is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts.

Program

Paradise, Beauty & Violence, Saturday 30 April, 1 → 2pm

A conversation between Tarik Ahlip, Lara Chamas and Samira Farah unpacking themes explored within Paradise around faith, beauty, violence and the Islamic migrant experience as it occurs in Australia.

Watch on Offsite.

A projected image is shown through two black curtains hanging in the gallery. The film still shows a blurred curved image of trees and fire casting an amber light through darkness.
A film is projected on the gallery wall. The film still shows a large grey rock with a crack down the middle. The rock sits on grass and there are two sticks on the right crossing over in the foreground. Black curtains darken the space.
A film is projected on the gallery wall, with two speakers at either side of the image and chairs placed in front. The film still shows
A projected image on the wall shows a long stretch of white fabric supported by a black pole. The fabric is stretched loosely across a natural environment of trees and dirt. A metal support structure is in the centre of the still. There are chairs and two speakers around the room that is darkened with black curtains.
The corner of the gallery and a film projected on the wall with chairs in front is visible. The film still shows a hand with wrinkles and age spots, touching a surface covered by branches and twigs.
The projected film on the gallery wall shows a human arm and hand touching the back of a cow. The cow has white and brown markings. The image is distorted with a curved lens.

Tarik Ahlip is a multidisciplinary artist working on Dharug and Gadigal land. Working across film, sculpture, verse and sound, Tarik's practice considers poetics as capable of driving epistemic change.