In Summer 2025, we will present Iranian multidisciplinary artist and writer Kasra Jalilipour’s first large-scale exhibition, ‘Gut Feelings 2.0’.

Image courtesy of Kasra Jalilipour, 2025.
Grand Union works with artists across different lengths of time, working with them in different capacities across our programmes. Having first met several years ago, Kasra was invited to perform at Grand Union in November 2024 for Samhain.
Samhain is a Celtic Pagan festival which marks the ending and beginning of the year. This festival has historically been celebrated widely across Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. We interpret Samhain as the beginning of Winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the Gaelic word for November, the celebration of the end of Harvest time, a queer turning, a time to venerate all ancestors.
For Samhain 2024, Kasra presented a performance about virgin Saints, nuns, martyrs, ritual, and how to write a prayer. From this initial performance we moved into working together on hosting Kasra’s first large-scale exhibition in Summer 2025.
‘Gut Feelings 2.0’ is in many ways a clear follow on from the performative explorations of November. However, the exhibition seeks to hold a more intentional conversation around ‘queer’ lives and rebellions in 19th Century Iran, which have been purposefully hidden away from the public consciousness. Whilst Kasra’s performances are often laced with comedy and humour, their visual practice is far more rooted in a research-led and material exploration that takes up the different corners of the Grand Union gallery.

‘Gut Feelings 2.0’ by Kasra Jalilipour, exhibition at Grand Union, Birmingham, 2025. Image by Patrick Dandy.

‘Gut Feelings 2.0’ by Kasra Jalilipour, exhibition at Grand Union, Birmingham, 2025. Image by Patrick Dandy.
Although at times, queerness has played a key and obvious role in Iranian art and literature, societal structures have ensured its erasure from historical memory, despite always having existed in the culture.
Taking inspiration from Qajar art, literature, fashion and the lives of historical figures during the Qajar era in Iran, such as Tahirih Ghorrat-ol-ain (1817-1852) a martyred women’s rights activist, famous poet, and theologian of the Bábí faith. This body of work creates a speculative archive of people who have always existed and need to be remembered.
The installation focuses on rituals within homosocial spaces created by and for women. Exploring the potential for religion and superstition as safe havens for queerness and alternative forms of love to thrive. A possibility lost to Iranian culture due to the modernisation and westernisation of the country. The histories of homosocial activity become a window to imagining what queerness may have looked like, and how these segregated communities allowed spaces for queerness to exist. Working almost through an anti-archive, and anti-history approach, ‘Gut Feelings 2.0’ plays with the concept of time, merging the past, present and the future.
Taking into account the lives of gender marginalised people during the Qajar era, fictional narratives are drawn to reimagine queer histories and lives. Jalilipour’s research is based on the history of shrines and relics, specifically shrines built for female saints, and how they provide communities for women, focussing on common religious histories across medieval central Asia and Europe.
Jalilipour creates speculative characters, in collaboration with queer and trans Iranian artists in the diaspora; Sorour Drabi, Sevin Shabankareh, and Priscillia Kounkou-Hoveyda. Each has been cast to create new figures that will feature in the show, alongside newly commissioned creative writing from each of them, responding to the concept of queer ancestry.
The body of work utilises moving image, 3D animation, sculpture and installation, to re-portray the lives of women and gender non-conforming people of pre-Western Iran, enquiring how fragments of truth may provide the answers for the future of queer liberation in Iran.
Expanding on Jalilipour’s terminology “Fragments of truth and fiction”, to explore ethics within archives and the historical erasure of queer people and those most oppressed in society within them, the multi-sensory installation questions how art can create archives anew, blending fact and fiction, allowing the line between the two to become blurred in the process.
The exhibition launched Friday 6 June 2025, and continues to Saturday 16 August. You can find out more about the Samhain performance and the exhibition, including various associated reading material via the links below.

‘Gut Feelings 2.0’ by Kasra Jalilipour, exhibition at Grand Union, Birmingham, 2025. Image by Patrick Dandy.
Further Information
About the artistOpen accordion
Kasra Jalilipour (b.1995, Esfahan) is an Iranian multidisciplinary artist, and writer, based in Derbyshire. They work in a variety of mediums including sculpture, works on paper, moving image and live performance. Through looking at histories and speculative fiction, their work takes on the role of recreating archival histories of queerness and transness, and at times they do this by looking at how religion intersects with these often unarchived histories. Solo exhibitions include; Haarlem Artspace (Wirksworth), Gasleak Mountain (Nottingham), Arcade-Campfa x BayArt (Cardiff), GAVU (Prague).
You can find Kasra’s website here.
AccessOpen accordion
We have gathered all of the online accessibility resources for ‘Gut Feelings 2.0’ onto one page.
You can find the pre-show document, an audio description of the exhibition, and a transcript of the audio recording, as well as a map of the exhibition by clicking here.
'Gut Feelings 2.0' WebsiteOpen accordion
Kasra Jalilipour has created a website for ‘Gut Feelings 2.0’ which hosts further information about their research, press details, and a resource list with further reading.
You can visit this website by clicking here.

Kasra JalilipourGut Feelings 2.0
Grand Union6 June – 16 August 2025
November Digbeth First Friday: Samhain inspired Performances by Linda Stupart, Hasti, and Kasra Jalilipour
1 November 20246–8pm‘Gut Feelings 2.0’ is generously supported by Arts Council England Project Grant, Jerwood New Art Fund, and LEVEL Centre.