Join us for a screening and roundtable discussion with artists Hardeep Pandhal, Wei Zhou, and Aqsa Arif, as part of a collaboration with LUX Scotland, exploring Asian diasporic culture and identity in Scotland and across the UK, through various modes of appropriated and transformed storytelling. Performance, myth and memory persist across the work of Pandhal, Zhou and Arif, as the artists adopt and reimagine forms of fantasy, folklore, rap music and narrative fragmentation.
Following the screening, catering will be provided before an in-conversation with the artists and Moritz Cheung, Director of Platform Asia.
Date: Saturday 14 March
Time: 1 pm – 4 pm
Address: Many Studios, 3 Ross St, Glasgow G1 5AR
FREE, click here to book your tickets now
Programme
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Hardeep Pandhal, Rishi Rich. MIDIevil X Snuffed Out Records, (2021), 3:55mins
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Aqsa Arif, Raindrops of Rani, (2024), 17:34mins
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Hardeep Pandhal, Riddles On Back Street. MIDIevil x Vandalorum Featuring Mister Ugly, (2021), 4:45mins
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Wei Zhou, The Unspeakable In Pursuit Of The Uneatable, (2023), 19:9mins
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Hardeep Pandhal, Dragon Piece, (2022), 4:45mins
In Raindrops of Rani (2025), Aqsa Arif draws on the tragic figure of Heer from the Punjabi love story Heer Ranjha. Arif reimagines her as Heera, a displaced mother navigating life in a Scottish high-rise flat with her young daughter after a flood destroys their home. Through this hybrid fantasy, Arif stages a layered narrative of a mother and daughter adapting differently and unequally to an environment marked by indifference and hostility.
At its core lies the story of Arif’s own arrival in the UK from Pakistan. Her family was initially placed in a high-rise council flat in Prospecthill Circus, on Glasgow’s Southside. Years later, they were moved again by local authorities to facilitate the production of Sony Bravia’s 2006 Paint advert—an extravagant campaign requiring 1,500 explosive charges and 70,000 litres of paint. Directed by Jonathan Glazer, with a reported budget of £2 million, the advert became an iconic spectacle. Meanwhile, the mostly working-class residents, refugees and asylum seekers were displaced and rehoused in other Glasgow high-rises. Raindrops of Rani reflects on the stark contrast between this global spectacle and the overlooked realities of the community it disrupted.
Wei Zhou’s The Unspeakable In Pursuit Of The Uneatable (2023) is a multi-sensory film work originally shown at CCA, Glasgow. The piece engages with the concept of Guaiyi, a form of strangeness that unsettles conventional norms and notions of desire. At its centre is the Huli Jing, the shape-shifting fox spirit, reinterpreted as a “queerkind” figure whose story unfolds across a three-channel video. The narrative explores transformation, sexual agency and interspecies encounters, adapted from a fox spirit tale in Pu Songling’s Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. The work also engages with the idea of hunting, referencing historical UK fox-hunting practices to examine dynamics of pursuit and agency. Fragmented narratives and interwoven perspectives invite viewers to navigate experiences that blur boundaries between the familiar and the strange, and between human and other-than-human forms. The work features an original soundtrack and sound design by Dawn Celeste Ashley.
Videos from Hardeep Pandhal’s YouTube channel—MIDIevil, Rishi Rich (2021), Riddles On Back Street (2021) and Dragonpiece (2022)—are interspersed throughout the screening. Incorporating his signature drawing and animation alongside characterised, often sardonic rap music, these confessional short films see Pandhal scathingly critique class, identity, power, racism and religion in Britain and the art world.
Myth & Memory is supported by the British Art Network (BAN) and LUX Scotland.
About the artists
Hardeep Pandhal
Hardeep Pandhal is a British Indian artist born in Birmingham and now based in Glasgow. He grew up in the Cape Hill area of Birmingham, a part of the city not traditionally associated with the arts because of its working-class, migrant population. Pandhal went on to study in Leeds, earning a BA from Leeds Beckett University in 2007, before moving to Glasgow, where he completed an MFA at the Glasgow School of Art in 2013. Since then, Pandhal has built a national and international profile, creating work that includes works on paper, large-scale drawings, installation, digital video, and his own rap music.
Pandhal has held solo exhibitions at The Drawing Room, London (2024), Tramway, Glasgow (2020), New Art Exchange, Nottingham (2019), Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2017), and his work has featured in major group shows including New Art Gallery, Walsall (2023), the British Art Show (2021–22), Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art (2020), Eastside Projects (2017), and Modern Art Oxford (2016). In 2018, he created an open-ended artwork for the facade of Birmingham’s Eastside Projects. He received a Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists in 2021, was shortlisted for the Jarman Award in 2018, and was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2013.
Wei Zhou
Wei Zhou (b. 1993, she/they) is a Chinese filmmaker and artist based in Glasgow. Working primarily with moving image and text, her practice explores sensory perception, embodiment, and shape-shifting myths, often through auto-ethnographic methods. She is particularly interested in the fluid boundaries between human and non/human, eroticism, and the intersections of body, language, and image. Recent projects include solo exhibitions The Unspeakable In Pursuit Of The Uneatable (2023) at CCA Glasgow and Portal (2025) at Glasgow Project Room, alongside screenings and group shows at Queer East Festival, Beijing Queer Film Festival, SQIFF, and Xiezilong Photography Museum. Wei holds an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art and an MSc in Filmmaking and Media Arts from the University of Glasgow, and is currently undertaking a practice-based PhD at the University of Edinburgh, researching shape-shifting through moving image practices.
Aqsa Arif
Aqsa Arif is a Scottish-Pakistani artist and filmmaker based in Glasgow. Her work has been exhibited across the UK, including at Edinburgh Printmakers, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, GoMA, Southwark Park Galleries, G39, and Site Gallery. She has undertaken residencies at Cove Park, Street Level Photoworks, Hospitalfield, Jupiter Artland, and The British School at Rome.
In 2022, she was awarded the 20/20 residency by UAL’s Decolonising Arts Institute, resulting in her first solo exhibition, Anam Ki Almari (The Trophy Cupboard), and 20 permanent acquisitions across UK public collections. Her film Mountain of Light was acquired by Glasgow Museums and is now on permanent display at the Riverside Museum.
In 2023, Arif received the Platform: Early Career Artist Award and the RSA Morton Award, and was nominated for Jerwood Survey III, touring nationally from 2024–25. Her film Spicy Pink Tea was selected for BAFTA-qualifying festivals, winning Best Dance Film at Aesthetica and earning a nomination for Young Scottish Filmmaker at Glasgow Short Film Festival 2023. It toured nationally with Selected 13, curated by videoclub and FLAMIN, after being nominated by artists shortlisted for the 2022 Film London Jarman Award.
Myth & Memory is supported by the British Art Network (BAN). BAN is a Subject Specialist Network supported by Tate and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, with additional public funding provided by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. The Network promotes curatorial research, practice and theory in the field of British Art. Its members include curators, academics, artist-researchers, conservators, producers and programmers at all stages of their professional lives.
Find out more: www.britishartnetwork.org.uk
