Launch: Saturday 7th December 1-3PM

Dates: 7th December 2024 – 1st February 2025

Gallery: Upper & Lower Galleries

Can You Hear Me was first shown in Golden Thread in 2014 and has become more pertinent in the intervening years. It brings together work by Susan Hiller and Shirin Neshat in an exhibition concerned with language, culture and power. The two works, Susan Hiller’s The Last Silent Movie and Shirin Neshat’s Turbulent, have become iconic and have both been written about extensively. Much of Neshat’s work examines the physical, emotional, and cultural implications of veiled women in Iran. Her work, which has never been shown in Iran, essentially declares the female presence in a male dominated culture. In her films and photographs, the female gaze becomes a powerful and dangerous instrument for communication.

“In The Last Silent Movie 2007 Hiller orchestrates voices of the last speakers of extinct or endangered languages. Subtitles translate their utterances while the screen remains black. Neither silent nor a movie in the conventional sense, this work provides the framework for the audience to reflect on the speakers and the conditions that may have prompted the loss of their language. These silenced speakers buried in archives, have literally been given voice again by the artist.”

“Neshat’s work, Turbulent 1998 is from a trilogy of works that each utilize dual video screens to portray abstract oppositions based around gender and society, the individual and the group. Whilst the work hints at the restrictive nature of Islamic laws regarding women, it simultaneously opens multiple readings, reaching instead toward universal conditions.”

The Golden Thread Gallery would like to acknowledge the support of the Susan Hiller Estate and the Lisson Gallery for the loan of The Last Silent Movie, and Shirin Neshat and the Gladstone Gallery for the loan of Turbulent.

Accessibility 

The Lower Gallery is accessed via the ground floor, which is step-free. The Upper Gallery is accessed via lift from the ground floor or via the main staircase.

The gallery spaces will be darkened for this exhibition. The films include sound and music.

Large print versions of exhibition texts are available.

Please let us know if you have any questions or additional requirements, we are working hard to make the gallery as accessible as possible for everyone.

Golden Thread Gallery is supported by: