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This is a past display. Go to current displays
two video projections in a dark room, on the right two people kiss. The left screen is split into four with two pixelated portraits, a blue screen and arabic text

© Akram Zaatari, Courtesy the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut / Hamburg. Installation view, The Uneasy Subject. 2011 MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y León.

Akram Zaatari

Akram Zaatari explores how the internet fulfils the desire to perform for strangers

Dance to the End of Love is a dance piece based on YouTube clips from countries across West Asia and North Africa, including Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Oman. Zaatari chose material from 2005–10 of mostly young men performing activities that range from singing, dancing and playing music. They recreate scenes from sci-fi films or do stunts: special effects fireballs are hurled across the screen and jeeps are driven out into the desert in precarious positions.

Most of the performers filmed themselves with mobile phones and uploaded the low-res footage onto YouTube where millions of people around the globe could now see them. Zaatari said: ‘The web enables us to hear all those voices, all those desires screaming out from remote rural places, from villages and cities, wanting to be admired, loved, wanting to be heard and seen.’

The clips show how attitudes around masculine identities quickly spread and adapt to different settings and contexts. Cyberspace creates an audience and turns their performances into popular trends to repeat or re-enact. Zaatari completed this work at the beginning of a period of anti-government protests and uprisings, referred to as the ‘Arab Spring’ by western commentators. YouTube and other self-broadcast platforms played an important role in the political climate at that time.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, many of us have lived through moments of forced solitude, relying on the virtual world for connection. Zaatari’s work reveals a human desire to impress strangers. Reflecting on the resonance of this work today, the artist invites us to ask ourselves about that one thing we’d do when offered the opportunity to perform for the world.

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Tate Modern
Blavatnik Building Level 3

Getting Here

1 February 2022 – 20 November 2023

Free

Pipilotti Rist, Lungenflügel  2009

Pepperminta, a red-haired woman, travels across land and water in this work. She is mostly unclothed to represent a human being unconnected to a time, class or place. Her body is magnified and multiplied, while a pig, apples, tulips and strawberries appear distorted and giant. As Pepperminta moves through water, her menstrual blood blends into the sea. Rist has said, ‘I think a girl should shout for joy the first time she gets her period, because it is a symbol of creative power, of life. Blood, our lifeblood.’ Drawn in by her dream-like spaces and larger-than-life images, we might feel transported to another universe.

There is no dialogue for us to follow, only a psychedelic soundtrack by Anders Guggisberg and Roland Widmer – two of the artist’s many long-term collaborators. Rist uses saturated colours and special editing techniques in her work. Aiming to draw us into fantasy worlds so we also become part of them, Rist has said: ‘At first you look at the box, at the [television] screen or projection, but when you concentrate on the sequences you feel as if you’re inside the box, behind the glass, within the wall. You forget everything around you… you’re swallowed.’ Rist wants the artwork to feel ‘noble and inviting’.

Gallery label, April 2025

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artworks in Akram Zaatari

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T16113: Lungenflügel
Pipilotti Rist Lungenflügel 2009
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