Elles font tourner les ciels

Leila Zelli is interested in our relationship to ideas of the Other and elsewhere, specifically within the geopolitical terrain commonly but disputably referred to as the Middle East. She creates site-specific installations using images, videos, and texts often sourced from the Internet and social media. Reflecting from a position of both distance and belonging, Zelli's work confronts the viewer with a tension between pleasing or so-called beautiful images and the situations of political crisis and resilience with which they are associated.

Her most recent work is a montage of videos found on Instagram between 2021-2023, in which Iranians share aspects and moments depicting, in a broad sense, life in Iran. Ranging from romantic to subliminal, quotidian to politically urgent, the artist meticulously edits these images together in order to narrate their will to freedom, especially where it pertains to Iranian women. Determination and resilience are seen in the protagonists’ defiance of barriers, landscapes, traditions, beliefs, influences, and limitations.