Practice Makes Practice: welcome back to Abel Shah!

Abel Shah is an artist duo consisting of Alex Bell and Giulia Shah, both currently based in London.

Collaborating since 2016, we share similar interests in “authorship”, the (re)presentation of “things”, generation of knowledge and structures of power. We have been developing a dialogical approach to art making, and found that alternative ways of communicating, language, meaning and translation are the core subjects within our practice.

As a duo, our practice is embedded in a plurality of experience and voices. We construct objects, texts, images and sound that often manifest into multi-media installations, and build frameworks for dialogue and collaboration (amongst ourselves and with other practitioners).

The relationships between image-object, physical-virtual, verbal-nonverbal, past-future, regeneration-decay are highly significant in our practice, reflecting our approach to the ongoing exchange and multitude of experiences that exist when making art as a non-singular artist. We do not think of these in binary or opposition, but in a constant state of flux, push and pull, and in this tension we try to blur notions of hierarchy and obstruct linear readability.

We are also extremely interested in finding other forms of exchange outside of a “studio” practice. Since 2018 we have been running Residency 11:11 from our home in London which we see as a parallel to our practice and a direct reflection of our ambitions to find alternative forms of “exchange” and community.