Sometimes, on London’s art map, you pin a spot that leads you to a story taking you beyond geographies and time. Hidden within Deptford’s industrial fabric, Elizabeth Xi Bauer is currently hosting exactly such an experience: Shadi Al-Atallah’s shattering exhibition “COBRA”.
Added to Apartment No: 26’s London route, this special show runs until January 24, 2026. If, in the first month of the year, you want to trace digital memory and a lost past, this exhibition is perfect for you.
We have known London-based Saudi artist Shadi Al-Atallah until now for her emotionally charged figurative paintings and her brush that depicts the limbo between identity and conflict. Yet in this exhibition, the artist makes a bold move, setting aside her brush and diving into the murky waters of memory. As you step into the gallery’s industrial “Fuel Tank,” what greets you is not paintings hanging on the walls but curtains twisting like a snake’s body through the space, plays of light, and ghosts projected onto those curtains.
Mourning a “NickName”
The images projected onto the curling curtains in the space emerge from Al-Atallah’s deep archival research. Moments of queer men and transfeminine individuals in Saudi Arabia dancing together—intimate, spontaneous, joyful, and equally defiant… But behind this visual feast lies a bittersweet, even heart-wrenching reality.
“COBRA,” the title of the exhibition, is actually the online alias of one of the people we see dancing in these videos. The artist accidentally learns from comments under the video that this joyfully dancing person has passed away. At that moment, the exhibition ceases to be merely a visual archive and transforms into a visual elegy for a digital ghost—an unnamed hero no longer among us. Al-Atallah takes that lost visibility and fragile history, translating it into a multisensory world with sound, light, and video.
If you’re in London, make your way to Deptford and, among these serpentine curtains, send a silent salute to Cobra’s memory.
