For more than a decade, Runa Islam has created 16mm and 35mm films and film-based installations that are generated from an interest in avant-garde film history, theories, and structures of filmmaking. Islam constructs poetic compositions that exhibit a precise attention to formal details and an open narrative structure. Her works are presented in carefully crafted installations and configurations that foreground an interest in the apparatus of film-viewing experience. More often than not, Islam presents her works on film, rather than as digital transfers, highlighting the importance of the medium for her practice.

For her exhibition at SITE, Islam will present three works created within the last ten years: How Far to Faro(2004-2005), What is a Thought Experiment Anyhow? (2007), and The Restless Subject (2008). This selection includes single, two- and three-channel projections and points to Islam’s dialogue with the history of moving image devices and work of film directors such as Ingmar Bergman. These works engage in a cohesive visual dialogue while showcasing the variety of Islam’s practice. Runa Islam’s work was included in the 2005 Venice Biennial and the 2003 Istanbul Biennial, and she has had solo exhibitions at UCLA’s Hammer Museum and the Serpentine Gallery, London among others. Islam lives and works in London.