Using both documentary techniques and fictional scenarios, Dobai work explores physical and intuitive interactions between people – and between people and places – revealing the city as a social and sometimes political space, and its often alienating impact on individuals.
Literary references, from such writers as Tennessee Williams and Raymond Carver, also inform this series of photographic portraits and film work, Short Story Piece, that investigate how an image can represent the interior life of a sitter, how text and image relate to one another, and how narrative structure can be suggested, manipulated and disrupted within still and moving imagery. Exploiting a range of visual conventions, Dobai’s multifaceted works make you aware of the way images are constructed in art, film and popular culture.
This was her first major solo exhibition in the UK, which coincided with the end of her two-year residency at London’s Delfina Studio Trust. It featured photographic and film works made during that time, including a new, specially commissioned, two-screen film installation, as well as key earlier works.