Working between London and Tehran, artist and filmmaker Mitra Tabrizian examines contemporary society through complex, often subtly unsettling, images of individuals and the urban landscape. For London’s Art on the Underground commission in 2017, she interviewed night-shift workers in the city and created You don’t know what nights are like?, consisting of two photographs presented as billboards at Southwark station. The monumental images of Laura, a museum security guard, and of a building at the break of dawn evoke the sense of loneliness often found at the city’s margins. Revisiting the project in the context of the current health and social crises, Tabrizian reminds us of the many unseen workers and immigrants that are essential to life in the city.
