Whitechapel Gallery listed "Aya Haidar: A Love Song for Whitechapel", an evening event in its Assembly Room on 1 October, marking a public realm commission by the artist. The work is curated by the public art organisation UP Projects and commissioned by Tower Hamlets Council, whose own community news feed carried the announcement.
A Love Song for Whitechapel takes the form of rhyming couplets that make up the chorus of a specially composed song, written out of community engagement sessions with pupils from Swanlea School and members of the Bow Geezers, a group of East London elders. The finished piece is to be projected onto a wall near Whitechapel Market in October 2026, so the work exists as light and text in the street rather than as an object in a gallery.
The commission continues Aya Haidar's method of gathering spoken testimony from a specific community and giving it back in a public form, the approach behind her earlier work with Deveron Projects in Scotland and the Hopscotch Women's Centre in London. Where that work has most often been hand-stitched, here the material is language and projection.
