Faith, Place and Migration

'Faith, Place and Migration' represents the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of London’s oldest Nigerian community, the Muslim Association of Nigeria (MAN UK). Originating in the 1960s as a transient group, it wasn’t until the 1980s that a more permanent community began to form, which led to their first place of worship - the Old Kent Road Mosque in Southwark. In 2018, approval was granted for a six-storey mosque to be built on the site, as both an act of devotion and a practical response to a growing community. In September 2021 the original building was demolished to make way for the new mosque.

This exhibition featured two expanded moving image installations created by artist Julie Marsh during a five-year collaboration with the Old Kent Road Mosque congregation. One of the installations, ‘Assembly’ (2024), attempts to filmically perform Islamic prayer through a moving floor projection. Originally filmed and exhibited in the original mosque, this film now serves as a record of the final Jumu’ah (congregational) prayer that took place before the mosque closure. For this exhibition, the film is projected into Staffordshire St, bringing the mosque congregation and wider community together through the re-performance of congregational prayer.

The second installation, ‘Virtual Assembly’ (2023), is an interactive 3D model of the mosque building hosting stories and accounts from mosque members. The audience is encouraged to navigate the site using a controller to trigger these insights as they move around the space revealing the lived experiences and embodied knowledge of the community.

Shahed Saleem and Julie Marsh co-curated an events programme in collaboration with the Old Kent Road Mosque community, offering the wider public an opportunity to connect with the congregation through workshops, talks, and events. The exhibition questioned the nature of a community archive and explored how the narratives of community members are embedded in and told through the architecture of their sacred spaces.

As part of the events programme, an Open Iftar temporarily transformed the Staffordshire Street Gallery (formerly a Methodist hall) into a functioning prayer space for the congregation. Local community members were invited to attend and share a meal to celebrate the breaking of the fast during Ramadan. The prayer was also live-streamed to the Muslim Association of Nigeria UK (MANUK)’s diaspora communities in Lagos, Nigeria, as well as Manchester and Birmingham.

This act of transformation, of both space and social relations, blurred the boundaries between exhibition, worship and hospitality. By inviting non-Muslim neighbours into a spiritual and cultural moment typically unseen by wider audiences, the event fostered interfaith dialogue, visibility, and mutual understanding. The live-streaming extended this gesture of belonging and inclusion across transnational networks, strengthening diasporic ties and highlighting the role of a mosque, not just as a fixed building, but as a mobile, relational, and connective practice.