HE CALL is a durational performance exploring resilience, identity, and the politics of the body. The work poses the central question ‘Is the body an enabler or an entrapment?’ Rooted in ritual and endurance, Mahsa Salali stands motionless, bearing 20 kilograms of chain, connected to seven double bassists. This sculptural image pays tribute to the radical Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya and the mythological force of Medusa.

The piece confronts and dismantles societal and religious expectations imposed on female-presenting body. Here, the body is reclaimed as a site of agency and resistance. Vulnerability becomes power. Stillness becomes protest.

Mahsa’s current work focuses on the gender binary and body, and the notion of modesty and misogyny in different cultures. Born and raised in Iran and migrated to the UK at the age of 18. Mahsa is committed to dismantling oppressive systems and using art as a means of creating transformative dialogue and resistance. For THE CALL they invite the audience into a space of collective witnessing, ritual, and reckoning.