Credit: Month of Performance Art Berlin: from Sweetmud 2015, Berlin, Germany.
SweetMud
Beloved Sara Zaltash
Friday 17 April | Strange Field
5.20 - 7.20pm
Info: 140 minutes, durational
Sweetmud is a durational solo performance that moves through cycles of prohibition, transgression and longing, tracing the formation of identity within their tension. Developed in 2011, the work draws on evocative personal moments from my experience as a British-Iranian girl shaped by religion, cultural expectation and rock’n’roll desire.
A sequence of seven actions repeats in a continuous loop, returning to its origin seven times: sweeping coal dust; marking difference; ecstatic rebellion; wine cleansing; prayer whirling; fall; and redress. Through these cycles, Zaltash inhabits the female body as a target for idealised mytho-poetics, where oppression and transgression coexist, and where gestures of freedom emerge within constraint.
The work establishes a visual and material language that unfolds across the trilogy: seven red wine bottles, a domestic chador, black coal, ecstatic song, and green—the colour of Islam. These materials are handled, worn, spilled and transformed, creating a ritualised landscape in which the mundane and the ecstatic collapse into one another.
Sweetmud has been performed at Basement Arts Project, Leeds (2011); Owl Barn Residency, Gloucestershire (2013); Peep Anatomy, Edinburgh Fringe (2013); The Milk Bar, Bristol (2014); Month of Performance Art, Berlin (2015); Gallerie KuB, Leipzig (2015); and Extrapool, Netherlands (2016).
Sweetmud is the first part of Tuul, a durational trilogy that weaves an untold story of British-Iranian womanhood by surrendering queerly to Western constructions of Iranian cultural identity. Tuul, meaning “duration” in Farsi, unfolds across three works performed over a lifetime, opening a space where oppression and transgression coexist through cycles of the mundane and the ecstatic.
Credits & Funder info
This work is developed, funded and performed by Sarah Zaltash, with consultation from Jess Sweet.
Credit: Sara Zaltash
Sarah Zaltash (b.1985, Reading, UK, they/them) is a British-Iranian artist devoted to evolving reality.
Working publicly as Beloved Sara Zaltash, they create at disciplinary and cosmological intersections, telling embodied stories that move between digital technologies, natural phenomena, communities and im/material artefacts. Through charismatic collaboration with these forces, their work seeds new mythopoetic acts that fruit heroically as song, writing, performance and hearsay, and culminate in physical and digital experiences for human and more-than-human audiences. Their practice spans site-specific, durational, scored, aleatoric and participatory forms.
Born in Reading to Iranian parents, Zaltash attended comprehensive school before completing a BA in Theatre, Film and Television (Bristol, 2008), a Postgraduate Certificate in Persian Language and Literature (Tehran, 2010), and an MA in Performance, Culture and Context (Leeds, 2012). They are currently undertaking an MA (Conversion) in Landscape Architecture (Gloucestershire, 2029). Additional studies include Astrology (2011–ongoing), Zero Carbon Futures (CAT, 2015), Arabic (KCL, 2017), Quranic Arabic (SOAS, 2018), Ancestral Lineage Healing (2018), Counselling Skills (2022) and Grief Tending (2024).
Zaltash is a Research Fellow of the Schumacher Institute, a Fellow of St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, and a Graduate of Spiritual Directors International’s New Contemplatives programme. Their work has been supported by institutions including the UN, British Council and Arts Council England, and featured in major international media. “Zaltash is electrifying… See her if you can.” — The Guardian