There Are No Honest Poems About Dead Women: Jemma Desai

Bringing together film and text, There Are No Honest Poems About Dead Women is concerned with feminist coalition, inheritance, and relation across the intimate and the political.

At the heart of the installation, a video work assembles archival footage, text, song, and newly filmed 16mm material made in collaboration with filmmaker Alia Syed. The arrangement of extracts drawn from poets, writers, singers and artists coalesces in a collage of image and sound to reflect on the politics of relation and new ways of being together. It prompts us to consider how such togetherness can be imagined, rehearsed, and received.

The work is accompanied by a specially produced edition collecting research and new writing by Jemma Desai, edited with Mason Leaver-Yap and designed by Rose Nordin, who also designs graphic elements throughout the show.