Resident Alien

Resident Alien is a single-channel video work that conjures the presence of something living, yet unplaceable. Like the paradox held in its title, the work embodies tension between the foreign and the familiar, the synthetic and the organic.

Created through a careful interplay of forward and reverse footage, the viscous substance at the centre of Resident Alien pulses rhythmically, as though drawing breath. This cyclical motion lends the material a lifelike quality, oozing, expanding, and contracting in a way that evokes a creature in slow metamorphosis.

While its surface and behaviour might suggest a digitally animated form, the work is entirely analogue, filmed in real time. The illusion of digital artifice is achieved through physical manipulation and editing, challenging the viewer’s trust in the camera as a truth-telling device. In this way, Resident Alien asks us to look more closely: is it alive, or merely performing aliveness?

Exhibited at:
Windows 98 – Pirsook Art Gallery, Shiraz, Iran, 2019
Windows 98 – Aknoon Art Gallery, Esfahan, Iran, 2019
The Weird & the Eerie – The Pharmacy Contemporary Art Space, Carlisle, UK, 2018
Eden Arts Art School Awards, Auckland, 2017 (Highly Commended)