Abbas Zahedi (b. 1984, London, UK) is an artist with a background in medicine from University College London and an MA in Contemporary Photography and Philosophy from Central Saint Martins. His practice engages with systems of care, thresholds of experience, and the creation of communal spaces for dialogue. Zahedi’s work often weaves together personal narratives and broader collective concerns, using sound and materiality as conduits for reflection and connection. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Stanley Picker Fellowship (2024); Artangel: Making Time (2023); Frieze Artist Award (2022); Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award (2021); Serpentine Galleries’ Support Structures for Support Structures (2021); Artangel: Thinking Time (2020); Jerwood Arts Bursary (2019); Aziz Foundation Scholarship (2018); and the Khadijah Saye Memorial Scholarship (2017). Zahedi is an Associate Lecturer at the Royal College of Art, London, and has taught at universities across the UK and internationally.
Youngsook Choi is a multi-disciplinary artist and researcher, with a PhD in human geography. Choi situates ecological grief as a form of climate interrogation and interspecies solidarity. Her ongoing body of wok In Every Bite of the Emperor (2021-present), explores ecological grief across communities in North England, Malaysia, South Korea and Vietnam. It aims to create a space of interspecies healing and solidarity by weaving through different geographical sites that share the pain of ecological trauma and broken communities. In 2023 Choi founded the transnational eco-grief council Foreshadowing. It was born out of the necessity to collectively witness the environmental loss generated by the extractive operations of neo/colonial capitalism. It aims to build a planetary pedagogy of love by exploring site-specific, community-oriented, multi-species healing methods. Choi has worked on projects with various institutions and communities, including Arts Catalyst, Barbican Centre, Rich Mix, Milton Keynes Arts Centre, MK Islamic Arts Heritage, Culture and Heart of Glass, UP Projects, Flat Time House and Raven Row.
Sally Davies trained as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist and worked for 20 years in the NHS, leaving in 2017 to pursue her interest in clowning and poetry. Sally is interested in the therapeutic potential of play and created Queer Family Cabaret, a workshop for families to play together using costume and clown. She has also curated workshops exploring surrealism and clown as a means to connect more deeply with nature. Sally currently uses clown and tarot to create connection and community, devising tarot decks which use the historical characters and psycho-geography of London to celebrate diverse groups. These decks, written as poems, become psycho-magic art-brut objects, created in community, as well as immersive embodied tarot performances (devised with the ecological clown collective Divine Ridiculous). Sally’s most recent deck, The London Clown Tarot was made for The London Clown Festival and used a cast of 22 contemporary London Clowns. She is currently working on her fifth deck within this series for and is returning to train as a psychotherapist using Breathwork.
