Aseel AlYaqoub: three films

A screening of three films by Aseel AlYaqoub, currently featuring in the NYUAD Art Gallery’s important Between the Tides: A Gulf Quinquennial exhibition (due to close on 20 April and well work seeing – again, if you’ve already been).

Through archival excavation and performative reenactment, AlYaqoub explores the entanglements of militarism, memory, and inherited state rituals in postcolonial Kuwait. Drawing from found footage, oral accounts, and domestic gestures, the selected films – When The Lyrebird Calls (2022), A Hundred Soldiers Somersaulting (2020), and Semiotics of War in the Kitchen (2017)  – trace the evolving iconography of war and resistance, from colonial influence to familial memory. Together, they question the reliability of inherited symbols and the quiet absurdities embedded in national myth-making.

The screening will be followed by a moderated discussion with the artist.