Amaal Said

Amaal Said’s Between Here and Elsewhere presents the artist's recently commissioned film Open Country (2025) in dialogue with a new photographic installation that unfolds across the length of Forma’s window gallery, 15 Bermondsey Square.

Grounded in Said’s lived experience, the exhibition reflects on complex questions around identity and belonging - exploring a sense of dissonance and dislocation felt by first and second generation migrants living in Britain.

In the film we follow a Somali mother and daughter travelling from their home in London and across Kent. As they move from familiar cityscapes and through estranging countryside, the daughter records an audio cassette for her grandmother in Somalia, which testifies to her experience of living in the UK. By placing two Black Muslim women within a cultural geography that has rarely imagined them there, Said considers what it means to yearn for a connection to a place and to others, whilst exposing the vulnerability that can arise through difference and prejudice.

The recurring images on the gallery walls depict the same characters gazing through windows in moments of reflection. Taken by the artist while filming on location at the Red House in Bexleyheath, the photographs further echo the architecture of the space, one that is visible yet inaccessible, and relay a quiet tension in the desire to be fully present in the here and now whilst simultaneously long for elsewhere.

Open Country was originally co-commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, Forma and Three Rivers, as part of a multi-partner project titled The Open Road. Presenting Said's moving image work alongside these newly conceived photographic elements in Bermondsey holds particular resonance as, set just beyond the Old Kent Road and near to the artists’ home, the gallery lies on the historical route of pilgrimage from London to Canterbury where the journey of the film begins and The Open Road series draws its inspiration.

Between Here and Elsewhere will be on display in Bermondsey Square from 26 February to 7 June 2026, with viewing access 24/7. We welcome this as a moment to celebrate Amaal’s work with friends, family and our neighbours here in Southwark, and invite you all to join us at the opening event on 26 February.

Of her experience Amaal Said offered:

Open Country has been an enriching experience for me, both personally and professionally. Through the project, I was able to reflect on my relationship to physical space as a Black Muslim woman, and on how visibility and safety are negotiated in everyday life. I wanted the work to create space for a mother and daughter to move freely through the landscape. Their journey becomes an act of discovery, of place, but also of one another.

Making this work required confronting my own anxieties around public space: the ways I have learned to hide and to minimise myself. Allowing the camera to follow this journey, and inviting an audience to witness it, felt both challenging and liberating.

Antonia Shaw, Head of Programmes at Forma spoke of the collaboration:

Working with Amaal Said as a local emerging artist has been a meaningful and sustained collaboration for Forma. Her practice engages thoughtfully with urgent questions of identity, belonging, and visibility, grounded in lived experience and the social realities of contemporary Britain. Between Here and Elsewhere reflects our commitment to supporting artists to develop ambitious new work through dialogue, care, and long-term support - most often in collaboration with partners.

At the heart of the exhibition is Said’s film Open Country (2025), co-commissioned throughThe Open Road partnership with Forma, Film and Video Umbrella and Three Rivers. The film demonstrates what collaborative commissioning can make possible: a tender and searching work that quietly reimagines who is seen to belong within the British landscape.

Amaal’s work is distinguished by a sensitivity and integrity. The courage of her project lies in the generosity with which she allows us to witness moments of vulnerability, reflection, and connection. We are proud to have supported the development and presentation of this remarkable body of work.

Image Above: Amaal Said, Open Country (I), 2025. Digital photograph. © and courtesy the artist. Funded by Arts Council England. Supported by Film and Video Umbrella, Forma and Three Rivers.