Limbs of the Lunar Disc
22nd May - 8th June 2025
Mimosa House Gallery
All photography by Devika Bilimoria
Limbs of the Lunar Disc, Sarah Al-Sarraj’s first solo show in London, curated by Jessica El Mal, presents a new immersive film, Isthmus Ancient River (2025) commissioned by Helen Starr’s Mechatronic Library alongside Separated by Millennia (2024), a series of narrative oil paintings commissioned by the Arab British Centre and Shubbak Festival.
This exhibition imagines worlds built on alternative temporalities, understanding that the time-reckoning systems that order our world were designed to facilitate capitalist imperialism. Reimagining time travel beyond teleological progress narratives, the works in this show present journeys across time and space using concepts of seasonality, quantum relativity and deep time. Inspired by the rhythms of nature and ancestral time-reckoning systems native to the Arabian Peninsula, these works imagine how our relationship to the land may continue to change as we adapt to one another across hundreds of generations.
In Isthmus Ancient River, an immersive film made in Unreal Engine, viewers are invited to follow an Ancestor Simulation on a journey down the river of time, witnessing the remnants and ruins of their descendants. From the distant future to the present, they encounter a radioactive waste isolation plant-turned-temple, centuries of ecological adaptation and the long term impacts of environmental violence, until they meet the present, represented as a dam in the river.
Separated by Millennia, a series of large scale oil paintings on wooden panels, depicts the lifeways of a mythic tribe of time-travelling nomads. The depicted characters traverse vast timescapes guiding adaptation and preserving biodiversity. The paintings follow the tribe’s journey from living in relative harmony to their fracture and separation across timelines, with the resultant Descendants and Ancestors longing for each other across thousands of years.
Inspired by Laura Nasrallah’s concept of the ancestral assemblage, where we are duty bound to those who came before us, this exhibition asks: how can we bring about intergenerational justice for those yet to come?
Limbs of the Lunar Disc is co-commissioned by the Arab British Centre and Shubbak Festival, featuring works commissioned by the Mechatronic Library. Curated by Jessica El Mal and hosted at Mimosa House. Supported by Arts Council England and Freelands Foundation.
Public Programme
Stories from the Satellite Dish: Book Launch and Q+A with Dalia Al-Dujaili, Mimosa House Gallery
5-7PM, 31st May 2025
Join artist Sarah al-Sarraj and writer Dalia al-Dujaili in conversation with Jessica El Mal to celebrate the launch of Babylon, Albion (Saqi Books). Through memoir and visual art, the discussion will explore identity, migration, and mythologies rooted in the contemporary Iraqi diaspora, drawing from al-Sarraj’s exhibition Limbs of the Lunar Disc and al-Dujaili’s newly released book.
Ripples Across Distant Timelines: Performance by Gisou Golshani, Mimosa House Gallery
7-8:30PM, 29th May 2025
In response to ‘Limbs of the Lunar Disc’, Iranian sound artist Gisou Golshani will perform a sonic conjuration inspired by ancient methods of timekeeping native to Iran such as the water clock agrarian technology.
Blending the sonic, the spiritual and the celestial, this performance will present a collage of spatiotemporal realities speaking to water’s role as a timekeeper, while questioning the potential of temporal disruption via field recordings, liberation chants and ecological rhythms.
