Ali Eyal
Let Them Say Something
ChertLüdde, Berlin
22 November 2025 – 7 February 2026

ChertLüdde presents Let Them Say Something, a solo exhibition by Ali Eyal, in which the complexities of history and memory dissolve into fiction.

In Ali Eyal’s (b. 1994) work, personal and often absurd details become key elements in (re)constructing family fictions, where roles shift fluidly between people, objects, spaces, and historical truths. Through performances, paintings, drawings, and installations, Eyal weaves narratives that reflect the fragmented, uncertain nature of his own childhood. Facts drift alongside imagination, which in turn becomes a means of survival and a strategy for dealing with chaos.

Let Them Say Something continues this practice, shifting the focus away from the artist and toward the actors within his stories. These stories, told in his distinctive, cartoon-like style of layered lines, are all unified by their setting: the family farm south of Baghdad that belonged to Eyal’s uncle.

At the far end of the gallery, a handwritten text in Arabic recounts the story of the artist’s cousin, Hissam. Hints within the story place it in the aftermath of historical conflicts shadowing Iraq in the 1990s and 2000s. The text itself remains elusive—partly as a wish for his return, partly as a memory of the past. According to the tale, Hissam painted a vast portrait of a warlord across his father’s fields—not out of faith in the image itself, but in its potential to protect his family by signaling loyalty amid the conflicts. As the portrait nears completion, word of Hissam’s actions reaches armed men. Soon after, he disappears—leaving behind only his footprints.

To accompany this story, Eyal has drawn his cousin’s feet and framed them low to the ground. Nearby, resting on wooden pallets across the floor, are fifty-eight portraits of politicians and military leaders responsible for the war in Iraq. Together, these works stage a confrontation between the personal and the political. The footprints, symbols of both absence and persistence, visually and conceptually overwrite the faces of those in power. Absence thus becomes central to the work, evoking the countless men from Iraq’s civilian population who disappeared without a trace during dictatorship and war.

Rather than functioning as a memorial, the installation offers a counter-history, one that remains unresolved and difficult to frame. Spread across the floor like evidence, the portraits blur the boundary between memory and material. Hissam’s act of “walking” across the portraits sets the tone of the exhibition, shifting truth into an ongoing process of both preservation and erasure.

Eyal’s narratives drift through distortion and repetition, with his visual storytelling becoming surreal allegories of fear, loss, and resistance. Let Them Say Something unfolds within this psychological terrain, where fiction and memory merge into a fragmented yet poetic search for truth. It is through this fiction that Eyal renders events from the farm anew, transforming it into a site where imagination becomes a way of grasping the emotional truths that reality cannot hold.

But in keeping these difficult memories alive, they inevitably begin to change. Where do the walls of the museum go when they are forgotten? And (2021) is a ceramic and mixed-media work depicting the family’s horse lying lifeless, its abdomen swollen with gas. Eyal extracts this image from his memory and repositions it within a new narrative—part of a larger project that envisions the farm as the site of an unlikely museum.

In this fiction, an anonymous curator discovers caterpillars devouring the museum’s artworks, including Eyal’s original drawing of the horse. The story continues with the curator attempting to preserve the creatures by cutting away fragments of the artworks, which Eyal brings into the gallery. In this installation, memory becomes both archival and unfixed—its elements constantly consuming, drifting, transforming, and remaking themselves in order to survive.

Although he now lives in Los Angeles, far from where his family’s farm once stood, Eyal remains constantly reminded of Iraq—of his uncle’s land, his relatives, and the fragments of memory he continues to piece together across distance and time. In his effort to preserve his identity, Eyal also forms connections through collaborative and personal exchanges. Serving as a bridge between his and David Horvitz’s exhibitions, the two artists present a series of collaborative ink drawings that record the weather and temperature in three locations saved on their weather apps: the city in which they both currently live, the city where their exhibitions are held, and the nearest city to the site of Eyal’s family farm. Drawing Eyal’s stories into the present, these three works on paper evoke both proximity and absence, reflecting the tension between lived experience and mediated memory that lies at the heart of his practice.

Ali Eyal’s work inhabits an unlivable reality even as it records it, translating resistance into poetic form. Within these narratives, the farm functions as an enduring point of departure—a mythical place that grounds and unsettles his practice. In order to return to this site of origin, long after it has been destroyed, Eyal moves through shifting terrains of memory, history, and imagination with elusive complexity. In the exhibition, the farm becomes a space of creation and renewal, where family members and fictional characters alike reclaim their voices within a violent history, echoing the call to Let Them Say Something. The exhibition ultimately becomes an act of listening, with Ali Eyal as its spectral narrator.

Biography:

Ali Eyal (b. 1994) is a Los Angeles-based artist whose multidisciplinary practice—spanning drawing, painting, assemblage, and film—considers the entanglements of personal memory, political violence, and loss. His work blurs the lines between traditional craftsmanship and contemporary, research-based methodologies, crafting meditative yet impactful narratives that reflect the condition of a generation beset by foreign interference and mourning the erosion of cultural identity. He earned his undergraduate degree from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad before continuing his studies at the Home Workspace Program (HWP), an independent study program at Ashkal Alwan in Beirut, Lebanon.