What does it mean to exist when the world you inhabit feels increasingly impossible to call home? Amidst times of austerity, injustice and political turmoil, the exhibition Neither Forever nor Instant offers art as the universal language to spark dialogues of change at Madrid’s Ipso Facto, from 5 November 2026 to 10 January 2027. Featuring the work of seminal photographers Justine Kurland, Genesis Báez and Sara Abbaspour, each piece captures a conversation from survival to joy.
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| by Sara Abbaspour. Courtesy METAL. |
by Talitha Messham, METAL
From Justine’s Girl Pictures of teenage runaways to the intimacy of kinship in Genesis’ Blue Sun, and Sara’s portrayal of Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom movement, each piece denotes more than a ‘female gaze’ but a challenge to systems of hegemony. An ode to Audre Lorde’s essay Poetry Is Not a Luxury, the exhibition title reminds us that emotion, and the possibility women carry within themselves, can be just as radical as revolution. In conversation with METAL, each artist shares their own means of resistance ahead of the exhibition’s opening.
Neither Forever nor Instant opens on November 5th. I’m interested to know about how your creative relationship with each other came about. How did you all meet? When did it become apparent that your practices should intertwine?
Justine Kurland: We met at Yale when I was a visiting instructor and Genesis and Sara were students, but this gives the false impression that there is a hierarchy in our relationship. Both Sara and Genesis teach now, and they would probably agree with me that teachers learn as much from their students as the students learn from them. That’s the case with the three of us; we are influenced by each other’s practices as an ongoing conversation.
Probably the most significant intersection in our work is the idea that photography can make our connectedness visible. Each of us, differently, stages scenes or performs interventions as a way to expand what a photograph can show, to open the field to speculative possibilities.
