“Soul of the Soul جان ِ جانان روح الروح”
Elyas Alavi, Ayman Kaake, Ali Tahayori and Kia Zand
29 Nov → 31 Jan 2026
Gallery
West Space presents Soul of the Soul / جان ِ جانان / روح الروح by four queer artists from the Southwest Asia/North Africa (SWANA) region reflecting on their shared experience as 'outsiders' in Australia.
Elyas Alavi, Ayman Kaake, Ali Tahayori and Kia Zand work across disparate materials and processes, yet they share synergies in their experience of queer, diasporic subjectivity, and the intersections of cultural and queer identity.
Soul of the Soul / جان ِ جانان / روح الروح marks the first time the four artists will show alongside one another, and will be the outcome of a collaborative process over eighteen months. Through the development and presentation of this exhibition and its accompanying programs, the artists build new connections and focus on what it is to be a migrant queer person of SWANA background at this point in history.
This exhibition is supported by Creative Australia and accompanied by a day of talks, performance and food supported by City of Yarra.
Elyas Alavi is an Afghanistan born Hazara artist in Naarm/Melbourne. His multi-disciplinary practice examines the intersections of displacement, memory, gender, and sexuality through painting, installation, moving image, poetry and performance. Alavi examines the complex intersections of race, displacement, memory, gender and sexuality accounting for hyper-invisibilities and troubling received notions of culture and belonging. His work complicates histories in the SWANA region and thinks through the links between the globalised condition, settler colonialism, and who is implicated in the mobility and displacement of Black and Brown bodies.
Ayman Kaake is a Lebanon born artist in Naarm/Melbourne. Kaake's photo-media based practice explores diasporic melancholy and the loss and agony of living in exile away from his home country. His surreal and cinematic scenes often draw from his personal histories, myth and the history of cinema.
Ali Tahayori is an Iran born artist in Gadigal/Sydney. Tahayori uses photography, moving image, and installation to explore themes of identity, home, and belonging. Combining fractured mirrors with text and imagery, he draws on ancient Iranian philosophies about light and mirrors to create kaleidoscopic experiences, moments of revelation and concealment that hint at the conflicted nature of his identity. Translating the traditional Iranian craft of Aine-Kari (mirror-works) into a contemporary visual vocabulary, Ali combines a discourse about diaspora and displacement with an exploration of queerness – testifying to his experience of being othered.
Kia Zand is a multidisciplinary Iranian artist in Naarm/Melbourne. Drawing on his mixed Iranian heritage, he combines image, sound, and sculpture to explore an abstract space where geological, cultural, and political borders meet. His works across image, sound and sculpture focus on cultural and environmental transformation.