Name: Abbas Zahedi: Dissociative Realism
Start: 2026-02-24T17:00:00+00:00
End: 2026-02-24T18:30:00+00:00
Location: 128 Bullingdon Rd

This talk introduces dissociative realism as a framework that has emerged through Abbas Zahedi's practice
About this Event

This talk introduces Dissociative Realism as a framework that has emerged through Abbas Zahedi's practice across sound, sculpture, performance, and collective encounters. Drawing on recent projects and institutional contexts, the talk reflects on how artistic labour, care structures, and infrastructural systems intersect, particularly in relation to grief, trust, and forms of public service, offering a reflective overview of his practice to date, alongside the questions and tensions that currently shape it.

Abbas Zahedi (b. 1984, London, UK) is an artist working at the intersections of sonic and sculptural forms, exploring systems of care, thresholds of experience, and the social architectures of our time. His practice has been described as a form of dissociative realism — moving between intimacy and estrangement, and attuned to forms of meaning that sit beyond the purely material.

A former medic with training in psychiatry, Zahedi holds an MA in Contemporary Photography and Philosophy from Central Saint Martins. Recent awards include the Stanley Picker Fellowship (2024), Artangel: Making Time (2023), Frieze Artist Award (2022), Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award (2021), and the Khadijah Saye Memorial Scholarship (2017). He is an Associate Lecturer at the Royal College of Art, London, and has taught widely in the UK and internationally.