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A landscape image of organic matter covering breasts. The organic matter appears almost like mouldy leaves sewn together but it isn't quite clear what it is. The pale skin visible beneath it features a tattoo of a figure.
A portrait image of a person with short dark tousled hair, looking straight at the camera. The person wears dark clothes and has a small smile on their face.
A landscape image of a person performing in a dark space lit by purple-tinged lights. The person looks away from the camera, down at their outstretched arms. They wear a white vest top, a black leather waistcoat, glasses, and a chunky silver necklace. They have a shaved head with a short tuft of hair by their ear.
a landscape film still of a dark gallery space filled with seated and standing people, illuminated by soft, warm mood lights. A figure in focus to the left of the image has short bleached blonde hair, and wears a dark shirt and black t-shirt underneath.
a landscape film still featuring a of a person dressed all in black with short dark hair speaking into a wired microphone. A projector screen behind the person has a night sky-scape on it and a smaller screen to their left features a black background filled with white text, slightly too blurry to read. Warm orange lights are visible around the space.
A landscape film still of a figure standing on the canalside in the dark. The person wears a large white papier mache horse head and black underwear. A raft floats on the dark, still water of the canal in from of them. Trees and a graffiti covered wall loom out of the darkness surrounding the figure.
A landscape image of organic matter covering breasts. The organic matter appears almost like mouldy leaves sewn together but it isn't quite clear what it is. The pale skin visible beneath it features a tattoo of a figure.

Image courtesy of Linda Stupart, 2023

A portrait image of a person with short dark tousled hair, looking straight at the camera. The person wears dark clothes and has a small smile on their face.

Image courtesy of Hasti, 2024.

A landscape image of a person performing in a dark space lit by purple-tinged lights. The person looks away from the camera, down at their outstretched arms. They wear a white vest top, a black leather waistcoat, glasses, and a chunky silver necklace. They have a shaved head with a short tuft of hair by their ear.

Image courtesy of Kasra Jalilipour

a landscape film still of a dark gallery space filled with seated and standing people, illuminated by soft, warm mood lights. A figure in focus to the left of the image has short bleached blonde hair, and wears a dark shirt and black t-shirt underneath.

Still from Robert Alexander’s recording of Kasra Jalilipour’s performance at November Digbeth First Friday, Grand Union, Birmingham, 2024.

a landscape film still featuring a of a person dressed all in black with short dark hair speaking into a wired microphone. A projector screen behind the person has a night sky-scape on it and a smaller screen to their left features a black background filled with white text, slightly too blurry to read. Warm orange lights are visible around the space.

Still from Robert Alexander’s recording of Hasti’s performance at November Digbeth First Friday, Grand Union, Birmingham, 2024.

Still from Robert Alexander’s recording of Linda Stupart’s performance at November Digbeth First Friday, Grand Union, Birmingham, 2024.

A landscape film still of a figure standing on the canalside in the dark. The person wears a large white papier mache horse head and black underwear. A raft floats on the dark, still water of the canal in from of them. Trees and a graffiti covered wall loom out of the darkness surrounding the figure.

Still from Robert Alexander’s recording of Linda Stupart’s performance at November Digbeth First Friday, Grand Union, Birmingham, 2024.

November Digbeth First Friday: Samhain inspired Performances by Linda Stupart, Hasti, and Kasra Jalilipour

1 November 20246–8pm

Join us at Grand Union on Friday 1 November, 6–8pm for an evening of live performances for Digbeth First Friday. We are so pleased to welcome Linda Stupart, Hasti, and Kasra Jalilipour to celebrate Samhain through their performances.

Samhain is a Celtic Pagan festival which marks the ending and beginning of the year. This festival has historically been celebrated widely across Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. With the coming of Christianity to the British Isles, Samhain shifted into what we now know as Halloween. It is the time of year when the veil between this world and the next is at its thinnest, leaving the boundaries between the two blurred and porous. We interpret Samhain as the beginning of Winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the Gaelic word for November, the celebration of the end of Harvest time, a queer turning, a time to venerate all ancestors.

Each of these brilliant artists will individually respond to this time of transition and change through poetry and performance. Two within the walls of the gallery, and one outside by the Grand Union canal. 

About the Artists

Linda Stupart is an artist, writer, and educator from Cape Town, South Africa currently living in Birmingham, UK.

Stupart’s recent work thinks through the climate change, embodiment, abjection and the transgression of borders. They have performed as and on top of icebergs in the Arctic Circle (2019); and are currently walking the length of the River Cole in Birmingham, dressed in natural-dyed rags; foraged plants, twine, vines, and trash collected on the river’s banks as part of Watershed (2021 —  present). In 2019 they produced ‘All Us Girls Have Been Dead For So Long’  with Carl Gent – a full length sci-fi musical theatre production about dolphins, aliens, the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, climate change, queer bodies, Kathy Acker, and travelling to hell. This was performed at the ICA, London. In 2021 they worked with Carl Gent and Kelechi Anachua to produce ‘and then, a harrowing’  – a major immersive exhibition at Wysing Arts Centre, which unearths dominant and dominating relationships between bodies and ‘land’; proposing new ways of being together within ecological crises via ghosts; horses; harrows; rivers; folk singing, and digging. 

Their work is generally driven by a radical site-specificity; immersing themselves in the ecologies; histories, and fictions of the immediate environment, while unearthing and troubling straight(forward) narratives of place. Stupart’s work consists predominantly of  performance, film, writing and sculpture.

Hasti is a poet living and dreaming in South East London. Founder of fictional poetry collective ‘sluts against imperialism,’ they write into the land, speculative imaginaries, ideas of work, and a search for the world as it really is.

A member of the inaugural Southbank New Poets Collective and the Ledbury Poetry Critics, Hasti is the recipient of the 2023 White Review Poet’s Prize, the 2022 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize for Poetry, and have recently published poems in bathmagg, zindabad zine, and The Poetry Review. They have co-written short sci-fi film DIGGING, produced by Film4. Hasti also hosts open mic and poetry night Fresh Lip, and its sister show for Montez Press Radio, Fresh Air. Their pamphlet ‘U’ is forthcoming from Reference Press

Kasra Jalilipour (b.1995, Esfahan) is an Iranian multidisciplinary artist, and writer, based in Derbyshire. They work in a variety of mediums including sculpture, works on paper, moving images and live performance. Through looking at histories and speculative fiction, their work takes on the role of recreating archival histories of queerness and transness, and at times they do this by looking at how religion intersects with these often unarchived histories. 

Jalilipour’s solo shows include Haarlem Artspace, Wirksworth, 2024; Gasleak Mountain, Nottingham, 2024; Arcade-Campfa at BayArt, Cardiff, 2023; Academy of Fine Art Gallery, Prague, 2018. Their live directorial debut Apocrypha of the Later Saints was commissioned by Centre for Live Art Yorkshire, Leeds, 2024.



Access Information

Each artist will perform for roughly 20-30 minutes each, with 10-15 minutes between each set. We will share specific timings to our instagram stories and in the gallery on the day of this event so you know when to expect each performance.

Kasra Jalilipour and Hasti will be performing indoors, in the gallery space. The gallery space is located up two flights of stairs with no lift access. There is a spacious gender-neutral bathroom on site, although there are no mobility aids within the bathroom.

Linda Stupart will perform on the canalside. This site is up 6 shallow steps, with no level access or handrail. Please note this performance is outdoors, so dress for the weather.

We will be providing captions and transcripts for the performances. Recordings of the performances will be available on our website shortly after the event, for a two week period. We’ll make a post announcing when these are available to view.

Expect dim-lighting throughout the evening and varied sound levels for each performance.

There will be a pay bar serving alcohol and soft drinks within the gallery space throughout the evening.

If you require a quiet space when attending an event, or at any time during your visit, please let a member of staff know, and we can let you into the office or the Bothy on the canalside, where you will be able to take a breather, have a sit down in private, and you’re welcome to stay until you feel happy to leave. These spaces can also be used as private places for prayer, feeding children, or for any other need.

Please get in touch via email at info@grand-union.org.uk if you want to chat further about access or if you have any questions.

Digbeth comes alive on the first Friday of each month with exhibitions, late-night openings, special events, culture in unexpected spaces, performances, live music, and more.