Against a backdrop of ongoing conflict and political uncertainty, WITH MY ROOTS, the sixth Iranian Contemporary Art Biennale at Mall Galleries, arrives in London carrying considerable curatorial weight. Bringing together artists from Iran and across the Iranian diaspora, the exhibition presents painting, photography, sculpture, installation and video works exploring identity, displacement and cultural continuity. Yet what lingered after leaving the exhibition was not necessarily the geopolitical framing surrounding it, but something quieter and more psychologically charged.
While sections such as Eternal Iran and Art of Conflict place questions of history and nationhood at the centre of the exhibition, many of the strongest works move away from direct narratives of politics and instead enter stranger, more personal territories — memory, subconscious states and forms of emotional disorientation. Painting and sculpture, in particular, emerge as the exhibition’s strongest voices.
One of the works that stayed with me was Most Fruitful Fish Is Me by Soheila Golestani. The title itself suggests something elusive, but the painting occupies an uneasy space between dream and reality. Following personal trauma and subconscious responses to difficult events, Golestani constructs an altered visual language that feels oddly familiar. There was something almost Matrix-like about it — not visually in any direct sense, but in the sensation of reality slipping slightly out of alignment. It carries the feeling of being inside a world where things look recognisable but operate according to different rules.
Paria Shahverdi’s painting from the series A Truck Goes Through the Tulip Field similarly balances beauty with unease. The collision between the industrial and the natural creates a quiet disruption; something moves through the landscape that perhaps should not entirely belong there. The image carries a cinematic quality while resisting any fixed narrative.
Questions of identity become more fractured in Sahaar (Sahar-Khosrojerdi)’s Self-Paradigm series — Support, Purification and Paradox. Although operating as portraits, these works resist portraiture in any conventional sense. Bodies appear caught between construction and dissolution, hovering between psychological states rather than representing stable individuals. Identity feels fluid and unstable, as though each image documents a different attempt at becoming.
The exhibition also benefits from moments where sculpture interrupts the visual density of the surrounding works. Negin Baghery’s sculptures immediately brought to mind Constantin Brancusi. There is a similar reduction of form and pursuit of essential shapes, though filtered through a softer contemporary sensibility. Given Brancusi’s recent reappearance in headlines surrounding Christie’s high-profile sale campaign, the comparison felt difficult to avoid. Yet Baghery’s work avoids becoming derivative; there is an intimacy and lightness to the forms that gives them their own presence.
Mohammaz Reza Zabihi’s Bubbles series shifts the mood entirely. Combining metal and glass, the works feel playful and almost ultra-contemporary in their energy. Their reflective surfaces and buoyant forms carry a sense of movement and lightness, introducing a more optimistic visual language into the exhibition. There is something refreshingly uncomplicated about them; they simply invite you in.
One of the most compelling installations comes from Dina Abdose, whose multidisciplinary background across fashion, textiles and visual art becomes visible in the way materials operate spatially. Her work appears rooted in internal psychological states translated outward into physical form. Rather than illustrating emotion directly, the installation creates an environment where emotional pressure seems to become material itself.
Then there is Siavash Sofinejad’s Kings & Devils series, which introduces a different energy altogether. Bright, playful and immediately seductive, the works bring a welcome release after some of the exhibition’s heavier emotional atmosphere. Rich in colour and decorative intensity, they carry something of mythology, fantasy and popular visual culture simultaneously. If much of the exhibition asks viewers to sit with uncertainty, Sofinejad allows moments of pleasure and visual excess to enter the room.
Taken together, the works reveal the complexity of attempting to represent a culture, a nation or a diaspora through contemporary art. The strongest pieces resist carrying that burden entirely. Instead, they operate through smaller, more human questions — memory, trauma, transformation and the unstable nature of identity itself.
Rather than speaking with a single voice, WITH MY ROOTS succeeds most when it allows multiple realities to exist at once.
WITH MY ROOTS 6th Edition Iranian Contemporary Art Biennale, presented by Capital Art London, 22nd-30th May 2026, Mall Galleries, The Mall
About
Founded in London in 2016, Capital Art London is an international platform dedicated to contemporary art with a particular focus on artists from the Middle East and Iranian art. Working across exhibitions, partnerships and collecting initiatives, the organisation aims to connect global audiences with a broad range of contemporary artistic practices while creating opportunities for cultural exchange and dialogue.
Capital Art London works with emerging and established artists across an international network, supporting contemporary voices while introducing collectors and audiences to the richness and diversity of Middle Eastern artistic traditions and visual culture.
Alongside its artist collaborations, Capital Art London works with galleries, auction houses, curators and design professionals internationally, building relationships that support exhibitions, collections and cross-cultural programming. Current and ongoing partnerships include collaborations with Albahie Auction House (Qatar), Art Center and Mojdeh Art Gallery (Tehran), N | Gallery (Paris), and 3 Points Galeria (Barcelona).
At the heart of Capital Art London’s approach is a commitment to making contemporary art more accessible while creating connections between artists, collectors and wider audiences across different cultural contexts. @capitalartlondon
