Didar - The Encounter

Didar – The Encounter is a series of collaborative, photographic works based on mythologies from Scotland, France and Iran. The images are presented as a multidisciplinary exhibition, bringing together different artistic, practices, themes, subjects and experiences.

The exhibition is an experiential journey for the viewer taking you on a journey that is visceral and emotive. Images and words invite you to enter a dream realm in which waking and sleeping experience become intermingled. The work borrows from iconography, advertising, anatomical illustration and narrative painting, creating a series of discovered mythologies.

The project is a collaboration between artists XEDER and Alex Rigg, with further layers of input from Topaz Pauls, Dana Simm, Suzi Cunningham, Bram Geiben, Fionnuala Dorrity and Pippa Blundell. The images and live presentations includes written responses from over twenty writers.

Didar is a Persian word which means visit, encounter, meeting or sight and is one of the most often used and evocative words in the Persian language. It can describe friendly, romantic, first and last meetings, meetings which lead to new adventures, meetings which create memories, nostalgia and a desire and hope to meet again.

Didar – The Encounter brings photography into dialogue with dance, music, poetry and critical reflection, creating a space where disciplines, cultures and ways of seeing converge and reflects the collective’s interest in artistic exchange across boundaries.

This new photographic work is an examination of birth and death, joyous encounters and memorable loss. Each image becomes both a personal reflection and an open invitation to encounter - a conversation between self and other, image and movement, silence and expression. The photographic sessions took place in Scotland, France and Italy from 2024 to 2026.

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“I see this series as psychoanalytical more than anything. I hope through my exploration of multiplicity of identities, maternity, and home, other people will be able to explore their own relations to these themes. I was conscious of choosing fragments that would work at a distance with the photos, so that they leave enough space for mystery, imagination and discovery.”

XEDER speaking about his exhibition ‘North of the Soul’, which was presented in 2024 at the French Institute, Edinburgh.

Hibernation

I crawled under the shed
amongst dust and stones
why I was there is not important
belly to the ground, back to timber joists
next to my head a nest
badly made of hay and leaves
dragged there
during a frozen time
there too within its bed
a sleeping badger
sleeping for so long
through ice and summers
seven years since
we met in January -
you had your arm
around a chicken
curled together in the coup
looked up at me and sighed,
so warm, such bounty and warmth,
looked down at the chicken
then ran,

a two toned bear across frosted fields,
too cold to be awake
and so you came back
tucked a bed under your arm
and went to sleep.

Here we find ourselves,
you and I,
under the shed;
I am alive
and you are dead.

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ar 2025