P04 ‘GHOSTS OF THE PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE’ PIVOTAL : DIGITALISM // SAATCHI GALLERY
British Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, 2024
Presented as part of Pivotal : Digitalism, an exhibition curated by Rebekah Tolley-Georgiou at the British Art Fair spotlighting cutting-edge digital practices, ‘Ghosts of the Past, Present, and Future’ formed a triptych of experimental self-portraits exploring identity, migration, and digital embodiment through augmented reality and audiovisual media. The exhibition sought to demonstrate that digital art in Britain is no longer peripheral but central — serious, conceptually rigorous, and politically urgent.
‘Ghosts of the Past, Present, and Future‘ is a conceptual series of digital self-portraits investigating the tension between visibility and erasure—particularly for queer, diasporic subjects navigating inherited memory and imagined futures. Using 3D scanning, point cloud data, and AR placement, the works create new forms of spatial storytelling that exist between the private and the public, the intimate and the institutional. Each work stages a different engagement with presence: institutional critique, meditative abstraction, and speculative futurism. Together, they form a non-linear narrative of becoming - a reflection on what it means to occupy space as a queer, diasporic subject in the digital age and how marginalised identities can be seen, remembered, and imagined.
// Ghosts of the Past
A Dadaist interpretation of self-portraiture in augmented reality, Ghosts of the Past interrogates identity, resilience, and the contested nature of public space. Originally installed via geolocation on the bridge inside Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, a site chosen in response to a racially motivated incident experienced by Shahwali Shayan, the work has also been shown in Paris and Berlin. For Pivotal Digitalism, a version of the piece was adapted and installed outside the Saatchi Gallery.
The AR installation features a 3D digital collage composed of personal and cultural objects: handmade moss-shaped embroidery, paper jasmine flowers, and heirlooms such as the artist’s mother’s earrings, his father’s wedding slippers, and his grandmother’s kohl bottle. These fragments are suspended in space, forming a symbolic visual language that articulates the complexity of hybrid identity. The use of AR underscores the duality of being present yet invisible — echoing the experience of many immigrants navigating institutional spaces.
A line of Urdu poetry embedded within the work translates to: “When there was no space for greenery on earth, it became moss on the surface of water,” encapsulating the work’s meditation on survival, adaptation, and poetic resistance.
//Ghosts of the Present Ghosts of the Present is a hypnotic, immersive self-portrait rendered through a rotating point cloud system. The work engages light and sound to produce a shifting constellation of points, evoking a body that is in constant transformation. It reflects on the fluidity of identity in a digitally saturated world ; where the self is continuously scanned, abstracted, and reconstituted.
The viewer is drawn into a non-linear meditation on presence, perception, and impermanence. The cyclical motion of the point cloud resists narrative closure and stable form, reflecting the uncertainties of navigating personal and cultural identity in a context of fragmentation and surveillance. It reflects the fragmentation of identity in the contemporary moment - where selfhood is constantly scanned, surveilled, performed, and reconstituted through digital systems. It is both ghost and data; presence and absence.
The accompanying audio piece is made by Shahwali using a recording of his heart beat and audio synthesisers.
The result is an experiential, contemplative portrait in which the boundaries between self and system, digital and physical, are intentionally dissolved.
//Ghosts of the Future Ghosts of the Future is an augmented reality self-portrait placed on a virtual plinth ‘The Fifth Plinth’— a digital sculpture in slow rotation, visible only through a device. Unlike historical monuments built in stone, this figure is suspended in transience, ungrounded and ethereal. It reimagines the future not as fixed, but as something in motion.
The piece was virtually installed on what the curators termed as the “Fifth Plinth” — a conceptual continuation of the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London : reclaiming public space through digital means.
The work challenges how we monumentalise identity — especially for queer, migrant bodies that are often written out of history and denied a place in the future. It reflects the experience of being both seen and unseen, present yet peripheral. Like the immigrant condition, it is everywhere and nowhere, hyper-visible yet intangible.
AR becomes a metaphor for this paradox: a medium that can show everything but touch nothing. In this way, Ghosts of the Future is not just a speculative portrait — it is a rejection of permanence and an embrace of multiplicity. Identity here is not static but shifting, shaped by memory, technology, and imagined possibility.
“Together, the three works form a narrative arc through time and selfhood. Ghosts of the Past reflects on origin, resilience, and the journey behind; Ghosts of the Present captures the complex emotional terrain of contemporary existence; Ghosts of the Future points towards a horizon of hope — a pursuit of elation through becoming. The series is both personal and political, proposing that identity is not a fixed entity, but a process continually shaped by history, displacement, and imagination.”