The Shamash stays the same but the Atua is different
Mariam Tawfik, The Shamash is the same but the Atua is different film still, 2025. Image courtesy of the artist.
now on
12 Apr
–
24 May
Mariam Tawfik
Mariam Tawfik's film The Shamash stays the same but the Atua is different embodies radical sci-fi visions that reimagine indigenous futures—not through Western techno-utopianism, but as a reclamation of Mesopotamia's stolen temporalities.
Filmed during her first trip to Iraq in 2024, Tawfik's work rejects both colonial amnesia and fossilised nostalgia, proposing instead an Indigenous Futurism rooted in Iraq's layered history of disruption and its unexpected resonances with te ao Māori. For Tawfik, the future was always buried in the land.
Past Event
Chapter Two: Launch
Join us from 5pm on Friday 11 Paengawhāwhā April to celebrate the launch of our second chapter of exhibitions and projects.
More info
Mariam Tawfik is a multidisciplinary artist and sound designer based in Aotearoa, whose work navigates the intersectionality of faith, memory, and land.
Through melismatic soundscapes, immersive video and wordplay, Tawfik offers a meditative and hopeful space for contemplation and reconnection. She forges links between the landscapes and languages of Iraq and Aotearoa as well as between the spiritual and the earthly realms.
Tawfik’s sound designs serve as a drum for storytelling, inviting the listener to engage with the echoes of ancestral lands and spiritual realms. Her work calls for a reclamation of space and an invitation to collectively explore alternative narratives of our past, present and future.