Queens Road
Until 13 Sept · Free
“The building of a house we will never live in – a house for our ghosts where the gothic and the hallucinatory collide.” The Neon Hieroglyph is a feature-length 57-minute video installation by artist Tai Shani. In the 1950s, islanders on Alicudi near Sicily were haunted by sorceresses ‘maiare’, who flew to the mainland to steal food. Shani has created a new feminist speculative fiction, where tales of witchcraft and female transgression unfold in nine monologues performed by actor Molly Moody. Tai Shani is an award-winning artist who creates installation, performance, sculpture and moving image, often combining all four in a practice that blurs the boundaries of mediums, aesthetics and philosophy in meditations on radical feminist, non-binary utopias. In 2019 she was joint-winner of the Turner Prize, with Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock and Oscar Murillo. Shani’s prizewinning exhibit for the Turner Prize DC: Semirami, launched at Tramway for Glasgow International the same year, and her work has also appeared in Arnolfini and De La Warr Pavilion’s compendium of feminist activist art, Still I Rise. Her ten-metre sculpture The Spell or The Dream was launched at Somerset House in London last September. The Neon Hieroglyph premiered at Manchester International Festival in 2021. The video installation will be presented in exhibition gallery 2, the balcony gallery, on the front hall first floor, the floor above the sea dragon display. The installation will run into summer 2026. Trailer With thanks Acquisition supported by the Arts Council England V&A Purchase Grant Fund, supported by the National Lottery, the Contemporary Art Society and the Friends of Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives.