SELECT WORKS
Naqqāli - نقالی
Naqqāli نقالی is a multidisciplinary stage performance that reimagines the Persian storytelling tradition of naqqālī as a contemporary response to institutional structures that frame cultural heritage. Naqqāli responds to the Ardabil Carpet, the world’s oldest dated Persian carpet, displayed in the V&A’s Jameel Gallery. By reactivating the mythology of Ferdowsi’s epic poem Shāhnameh through her body, Salali turns the museum into a site where ownership, memory, gender and identity are contested.
2026 - Commissioned by Victoria & Albert Museum - London
The Call - Mubāh مباح
THE CALL is a durational performance exploring resilience, identity, and the politics of the body. Salali stands motionless, bearing 20 kilograms of chain, connected to seven female double bassists. This sculptural image pays tribute to the radical Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya and the mythological force of Medusa. Audience are invited to circle around the body seven times, Salali invite the audience into a space of collective witnessing, ritual, and reckoning.
2025 - Whitechapel Gallery London - Projet Moné Paris
The Walk
Caminaré en honor de quienes murieron por la libertad
من راه خواهم رفت به حرمت آنانی که برای آزادی کشته شدند
Durational procession for those killed in the name of freedom. Barefoot, Salali moved through Mexico City for four hours, carrying a heavy altar of flowers. White flowers symbolises mourning in both Mexican and Persian culture, marked the body as both offering and witness.
2026 - Art Week Mexico City
مادر X دختر
A mother and daughter step onto the stage together for the first time. Two lives shaped by distance, silence, and the long shadow of migration from Iran to the UK. They move through the storms of their relationship, They speak of daughters raised to be unshakeable, of sons who slipped through their hands, of the violation the female body remembers too well. They sing the Persian songs that once filled their home.
2025 - NAFS Exhibition Studio 12 London
