Join us for a conversation between artists Dan Lie and Abbas Zahedi, as part of the event series, Honest grieving for a better life.
Lie and Zahedi will speak to themes of ecological grief, systems of care, and the potential for galleries and arts venues to act as communal spaces for dialogue.
Dan Lie will be exhibiting at Spike Island in Autumn 2025. This will be Lie’s most significant UK solo commission and exhibition to date. Informed by ancestral knowledge systems, spiritual ontologies and contemporary ecological frameworks, Lie’s commission will celebrate natural cycles of transformation and the interdependent exchanges that structure ecosystems. Their work highlights the intimate yet expansive coexistence of diverse beings, acknowledging our shared and continuous participation in the processes of living, dying and decomposing.
Drawing from personal experiences with death, including the loss of their father during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lie has organised a series of events entitled Honest grieving for a better life. This series, taking place across a week in May, will explore the journey of grieving not only as a healthy and necessary practice, but also as an opportunity for growth.
Dan Lie will also be in conversation with End of Life Doula Aly Dickinson on Saturday 17 May, 3–4.30pm, discussing Dickinson’s experiences working as an End of Life Doula, supporting people, and those close to them, with terminal illnesses from the point of diagnosis through to the end of their life. Find out more
Content guidance: This event references themes of death and dying, and speaks to the contributors’ personal experiences of loss and grief. Please contact us if you would like more information. Visitors can access our self-care guide as a PDF download in the Information bar.
DAN LIE
Dan Lie (b. 1988, São Paulo) is a trans-nonbinary artist currently based in Berlin. Lie’s work demonstrates how abjection can be a tool of subversion and expansion. Their practice celebrates natural cycles of transformation and the many interdependent exchanges that structure ecosystems. A fundamental aspect of Lie’s practice is their desire to develop works which de-centre human agency and subjectivity.
Working in collaboration with forces they term ‘other-than-human beings,’ such as bacteria, fungi, plants, animals, minerals, spirits, and ancestors, Lie creates site- and time-specific works that can be experienced through multisensory channels. By giving visibility to materials that morph, decay, and evolve, Lie’s ecosystems highlight the intimate yet expansive coexistences among diverse beings, acknowledging our shared and continuous participation in the processes of living, dying, and decomposing.
Recent exhibitions and commissions include: To let go, Pinacoteca São Paulo, Brazil (2024); 36 months of loss, Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2024); Unnamed Entities, New Museum, New York, USA (2022); Them, Sculpture Garden, Geneva Biennale, Geneva (2022); Grieving Secret Society, 58th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, USA (2022); Sopro/Sigh/Hauch, Park Platz – Berlinische Galerie Berlin, Germany (2021). Lie is also a recipient of the ‘Berliner Programm Künstlerische Forschung’ 2024/25 (Berlin Artistic Research Programme).
ABBAS ZAHEDI
Abbas Zahedi (b. 1984, London) is an artist with a background in medicine from University College London and an MA in Contemporary Photography and Philosophy from Central Saint Martins. His practice engages with systems of care, thresholds of experience, and the creation of communal spaces for dialogue. Zahedi’s work often weaves together personal narratives and broader collective concerns, using sound and materiality as conduits for reflection and connection.
He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Stanley Picker Fellowship (2024); Artangel: Making Time (2023); Frieze Artist Award (2022); Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award (2021); Serpentine Galleries’ Support Structures for Support Structures (2021); Artangel: Thinking Time (2020); Jerwood Arts Bursary (2019); Aziz Foundation Scholarship (2018); and the Khadijah Saye Memorial Scholarship (2017).
Zahedi is an Associate Lecturer at the Royal College of Art, London, and has taught at universities across the UK and internationally.
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