Jannane Al-Ani's 2004 work The Visit screens as part of her solo exhibition 'Landmarks' at Ab-Anbar Gallery.

The exhibition spans more than two decades of photographic and moving image work, focusing on Al-Ani’s longstanding interest in the power of the gaze in response to lens-based technologies, the significance of eye-witness testimony, and the disappearance of the body in highly charged and contested landscapes. 

Jananne Al-Ani will discuss her work in a conversation with Shumon Basar on 12th October, 5–6pm.

The Visit consists of two distinct but related elements. In her large-scale projection piece, Muse, a smart-suited man emerges from a desert heat-haze and proceeds to walk restlessly back and forth along the same strip of barren earth. The camera returns to this view on seven different occasions; the passage of time marked by changes in the light and a shift in the lengthening, deepening shadows. A companion work, Echo, is a multi-screen installation, in which four women discuss an absent figure — an unnamed visitor whose recent re-appearance has both sharpened their feelings toward him and illuminated the extent to which he passes in and out of their lives. The relationship between the two elements – and the people found within them – is never resolved, but rather is left to shimmer on the horizon, like a mirage.

The Visit (2004) by Jananne Al-Ani was commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and Norwich Gallery. Supported by Arts Council England.