The Exchange: Abbas Zahedi and Joshua Leon. “We grew up in west London in the ‘90s. There was an energy that doesn’t exist anymore”

Abbas Zahedi and Joshua Leon have a lot in common. The long-term collaborators have developed a socially conscious practice that spans installation, sound, text, performance and active dialogue, which often manifests as round table conversations and open forums.

This pair of Londoners unpick languages of collective identity and heritage while interweaving their personal experiences throughout. They caught up at Bar Italia in Soho, ahead of a joint talk at Chisenhale Gallery in the East End, where Leon’s show ‘The Missing O and E’ runs until 21st April.

Joshua Leon: I remember first meeting at the Ministry of Sound, for the DRAF [David Roberts Art Foundation] 20th anniversary party. We were introduced by the curator Cédric Fauq.

Abbas Zahedi: I was Cédric’s ‘art pet’ that night. He stayed with me a lot when I was doing a residency at South London Gallery. In exchange for letting him use the spare room, he’d take me everywhere with him.

JL: We ended up talking about life in West London, in its many forms. We’ve got so many connections and shared ideas about grief and loss.

AZ: It’s been great to have someone to think alongside and collaborate with. When I invited you to a round table discussion about lament as part of my 2020 show at the South London Gallery, it was a real blessing. It remains one of the most powerful conversations I’ve ever been a part of.

One thing I’ve learned from you is how to use text to generate exhibitions, which is often primary. In artmaking, it’s usually the other way around. It made me realise that I rely a lot on dialogue in my own practice.

JL: I write, and then the work slips out. It’s a combination of memoir, poetry and some level of theoretical thinking. I call it a collapse – of archive, social history, and personal memory.

AZ: I call it conflation. I squish structures on top of one another. Things smash together and something else comes out, like the Hadron Collider.

JL: We are both borrowing something from our personal world, a symbol or smell or taste. I’m always thinking, how can I stitch in a part of myself my history or my position in the world?

AZ: It relates to how we grew up in west London in the nineties. There was an energy that I don’t think exists anymore. I live in the same housing estate as Grenfell, in an area that has one of the biggest wealth disparities in the northern hemisphere. But I was friends with the kids from those wealthy families, connecting through drugs, music, fashion, whatever. You and I were both hanging out in Notting Hill Arts Club, even though we might have been on opposite sides of the equation.   Multiculturalism isn’t even the right word – you talk about cosmopolitanism.

JL: It’s a term that’s gone out of fashion, but it’s the idea that disparate peoples can get along and still think differently when they do. I grew up in southwest London. I sang Christian songs at school but had a strong sense of Jewish identity as a kid. It’s about being raised by other people, in different places, and not just keeping to your own set.

AZ: I’m very adept at code-switching. I’ve grown up in this very pluralistic immigrant mishmash of class and culture and music.

JL: London has very specific vernaculars, but I think that can be said anywhere. The way we talk and move depends on the place we come from, and whether we feel safe. We approach this in our practice through materials and sound. You use a lot of materials that directly relate to your family.

AZ: And the benches you’ve created in your Chisenhale show, they’re not just sculptural, they’re a resting spot. I think that the world is overstimulating, and I go to an art space to reconnect with a part of myself through the work. I want there to be an effective relationship, a dialogue.

JL: There’s this mythology that artists are spiritual beings achieving something no one else can do. That’s bullshit. We have duties and responsibilities and families to look after. People call it community, but there’s a danger of the art world using that word and creating this ‘other’. I don’t agree with that at all.

AZ: We rely on personal narratives and lived experience, but there’s lots of abstraction in the work. There’s a delta between where it stems from and how you encounter it, with indeterminacy in between, so things might not click immediately. We ask a lot of people, but we also try and give a lot, too.

Joshua Leon’s show, ‘The Missing O and E’, runs until 21st April at Chisenhale Gallery, London. chisenhale.org.uk