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Southwark Park Galleries is partnering with Forma to present Artists’ Film International 2025 ‘Dream States’ - a programme of artist films from around the globe that dismantle reality and envision alternative futures, running in Lake & Dilston galleries from 19 July - 19 October 2025.
Dream States — the 18th edition of Artists’ Film International — explores dreaming as both a transformative state and a radical act, challenging perceptions of reality and opening pathways to alternative futures. Curated by Forma with 16 cultural institutions across four continents, this year’s edition showcases a remarkable cohort of artists, each selected or commissioned by an AFI’25 partner and presented in diverse formats, including exhibitions, festivals, and screenings throughout 2025.
At the intersection of personal consciousness and external realities, Dream States explores the emancipatory potential of dreams, altered states, and cinematic illusion. The programme foregrounds artists who disrupt linear time, blur fact and fiction, and navigate the boundaries between memory, myth, and fantasy to reimagine the world anew. Using an array of visual strategies, from analogue footage to CGI animation, layered archival materials, special effects and AI-generated imagery, these works harness moving-image to destabilise dominant perspectives. Reflecting upon shared histories, the artists’ eclectic and surreal dreamscapes - utopian and dystopian, intimate and collective - position cinema as the crucible of dream-making and a vehicle for changemaking.
Southwark Park Galleries is partnering with Forma to present the UK premiere of Turner Prize and Jarman Award shortlisted artist Sin Wai Kin’s The Fortress (2024) in Dilston Gallery alongside the full AFI’25 programme in Lake Gallery. The Fortress, co-commissioned by Lahore Biennale Foundation and Forma, examines the fragmented nature of human existence and critiques the notion of our singular, homogenized experience.
Artists' Film international 2025 co-curation and co-presentation partners:
- argos centre for audiovisual arts, Brussels, Belgium
- Center for Contemporary Arts Afghanistan in eXiLe e.V., (CCAA in EXiLe), Frankfurt Germany
- Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland
- Cultural Centre of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
- Forma, London, UK
- Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo (GAMeC), Bergamo, Italy
- Istanbul Modern, Turkey
- Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Los Angeles, USA
- Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) Manila, Philippines
- MMAG Foundation, Amman, Jordan
- Project 88, Mumbai, India
- Sapieha Palace, branch of the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius, Lithuania
- Southwark Park Galleries, London, UK
- Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland
- Tromsø Kunstforening,Tromsø, Norway
- Video-Forum of Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k), Berlin, Germany
Featured artists include:
Heesoo Kwon, Mykolas Valantinas, Ahmet Rüstem Ekici and Hakan Sorar, Elinor O’Donovan, Isabelle Nouzha, Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan, Cocoy Lumbao, Anette Gellein, and Babu Eshwar Prasad.
The full artistic programme is available at artistsfilminternational.com.
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The Fortress (2024)
Sin Wai Kin
Selected for AFI'25 by Forma and Southwark Park Galleries
Commissioned by Forma and Lahore Biennale Foundation, Sin Wai Kin’s The Fortress deconstructs the archetype of “Man,” the so-called rational subject of Western Enlightenment, whose self-appointed authority has shaped canons of knowledge and justified imperialism. Through a dreamlike narrative, Sin dismantles the illusion of his inherent and singular supremacy, exposing the unstable foundations on which his dominance rests and the catastrophic consequences of this constructed paradigm.
SThe Fortress will premier in the UK at Southwark Park Galleries on the occasion of Artists' Film International 2025: Dream States, in July 2025.
1 Park Approach, Southwark ParkLondon SE16 2UA
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