Ali eyal

leaving my eyelids behind

November 8th- December 13th, 2024

Exhibition Text

By Joumana Altallal

On a phone call with Los Angeles-based Iraqi writer Ali Eyal, he shares with me: “The

brush is heavy. My head is in Beirut.” We are speaking in the aftermath of an Israeli

explosion in Beirut, Lebanon. One of several which has taken place in this dreaded year

of genocide.

When he left Iraq, Ali experienced his exile in Beirut through an interdisciplinary arts

residency called Ashkal Alwan (which in Arabic translates to “Shapes and Colors” but is

used often to refer to the vast variety and breadth of a thing). As he arrives to us at

Visible Records, he carries with him the grief of watching the recorded destruction of

Palestine and wonders how, amid this eternal pain, one can arrive at the site of creation.

For us, as viewers, his art begins to unravel this question.

In the solo exhibit “Leaving My Eyelids Behind,” we enter a world in which transitory

memory reigns supreme. But it is a kind of memory which seeks permanence by rooting

in the body. Ali recalls a moment spent staring at an orange which has become

inhabited by mold and feeling inspired. Is memory itself a kind of mold which grows

slowly and inhabits the body? Or is the body itself the mold that overtakes memory? We

may never know. But for Ali, the body: the hands, the ears, the head, the eyelids, are

generators of images clearer than he can remember. And so too, must we think of his

art: as a transient moment which invites us to look closer, and closer, and yet closer.

Until we are almost inside of the work itself.

The first time I saw Ali’s work in person, I was in Baghdad on the 20 th anniversary of the

U.S. invasion of Iraq. I found myself seated alone in a dark room revamped for the

screening of a series of experimental video works. Each piece was created by an Iraqi

artist who was formerly part of Sada, a makeshift art school created in 2011 to support

artists in Baghdad working in the aftermath of the invasion and occupation. Ali’s work

caused me to weep—not for its content, but for its still assurance. For the ways that it

interrupts our idea of seeing, and asks us not to witness, but to take part in. To

reexamine where we believe our body ends and where memory begins.

In “Leaving My Eyelids Behind,” we are asked to imagine how a body can be vacated.

What does it mean to leave one’s eyelids behind? Is it an act of slowly obscuring the

body limb by limb, body part by body part? Or is it a kind of sacrifice? What will take

their place? You are invited to enter Ali’s work from any direction. Seek answers or end

with questions. No matter where you begin, you will find yourself cast in a world which

follows neither the logic of the body, nor of memory, but of something else: a memory-

body, a body-memory.

about the Artist: