Installation

Little is known about the cosmic dawn, the period when the first stars, galaxies and black holes were formed. Astrophysicists study it by searching for these earliest radio waves, emitted several billion years ago and obscured by ancient hydrogen clouds. When the next generation of telescopes is completed towards the end of this decade, we might be able to produce images of these primordial galaxies, but like so much else, we do not need to see them to know they are there.

At the heart of Kuwaiti artist Farah Behbehani’s solo exhibition, And Make Me Light, curated by Jumana Ghouth, is another nightly search for light and yearning for dawn, an entreaty to not just find light—whatever that looks like to you—but to become it too. Rather than an event or a finite state that can be reached it is an ongoing quest and one that arguably motivates the history of humanity regardless of scientific, cultural or spiritual beliefs.