Your Ecstatic Self

Artist talk with Rehana Zaman
Sunday 10.08.25

Your Ecstatic Self is a programme of recent artists’ moving image, exploring processes of self-discovery, curated by Morgan Quaintance and Abirami Logendran. From sexual and spiritual liberation to states of heightened awareness and presentness reached through physical practice, the programme is punctuated by recordings of James Baldwin reading from his classic novel Giovanni’s Room.

Join us for a Q&A with Rehana Zaman led by Abirami Logendran after the screening.

In contrast to the epiphanic encounter’s ‘mystic instant’ (the single moment in which the hitherto secular subject converts to a given theological position) each of the works in this programme explore processes of transformation over time. As such, works are driven by the force of different mental and physical realisations unfolding across the duration of each film.

This program is curated by artist and curator Morgan Quaintance and Abirami Logendran and was first screened at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London earlier this year.

Programme

Fallen Day (受难日) by Xiaolu Wang

Your Ecstatic Self by Rehana Zaman

ALDONA by Emilija Škarnulytė

Full Out by Sarah Ballard

US 2025, 14 mins., French with English subtitles.

In 19th century Paris at the Salpêtrière Hospital, patients were hypnotized on stage to reproduce the symptoms of hysteria for public audiences. Over a century later, high school cheerleaders are fainting en masse. Full Out is the inaugural work in a suite of films investigating the intricate threads between historical accounts of mass hysteria, the body's capacity for knowing, and the ways collective resonance can both fracture and heal.

About Rehana Zaman

Rehana Zaman is an artist living and working in London. Her work speaks to notions of kinship and sociality, seeking out possibilities of intimacy and transgression within hostile contexts. Conversation and cooperative methods sit at the heart of her films which extend into texts, performances and group work.

She stands in support of Palestinian struggles for liberation and against genocide, apartheid and colonialism.

She has exhibited widely in the UK and Internationally. Recent presentations include Serpentine Civic, BFI London Film Festival, Tromsø Kunstforening, BEK - Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts, British Art Show 9 (Touring), ICA Miami, Trinity Square Video, Toronto, Borås International Sculpture Biennial and Artist Film International Whitechapel (Intnl Touring). In 2019 she co-edited Tongues with Taylor Le Melle. In 2023 she was the winner of the Film London Jarman Award. She is a member of not/nowhere artist workers cooperative and her films are distributed by LUX.