SAFEHOUSE DE S.W.I.F.T.I.E.
MEADOW, London | 28 February – 01 August 2026
SAFEHOUSE DE S.W.I.F.T.I.E. was a solo exhibition by RAZA TARIQ, curated by Jarelle Andre Francis, that staged a near-future speculative safehouse belonging to a fictitious organisation "S.W.I.F.T.I.E." — a council-flat-cum-hacker-house illegally reproducing surveillance technologies, trafficking digital Muslim avatars, and laundering money for supernatural, superintelligent, and superwealthy clientele. The exhibition operated at the intersection of spirituality, technology, and the algorithmic financialisation of religious life, exploring what Tariq describes as an "Islamic cosmotechnics" — a framework examining how the unseen realms of faith and finance converge in contemporary techno-spiritual systems. A sort of a speculative infrastructure built, as Tariq has put it, from "objects that don't exist yet but probably could.".
Conceived in direct response to MEADOW's precarious existence as an apartment-based project space (prev. Enclave Projects) its current residential building facing demolition. Through sculpture, installation and interactive works, the exhibition explores the borders between the financial, technological seen and unseen, and the cosmological, metaphysical seen and unseen. Through works including "ZAMZAM 2056" ( branded ZamZam holy-water mass-exported in a near future world where the eternally running supply has been polluted by rare-earth drilling, producing spiritual superpowers in drinkers around the world), "ALLAHPAY™" (a spiritual payment processing platform where participants pays with their soul), "WIRE TRANSFER" (prayer beads restrung onto electrical wiring), and "THE REALM OF THE UNSEEN" (an interactive botfarm where users submit their phones to a dormant loop of Quranic recitation), the work imagines modern technology as a superstitious web of talismans and spells. Controlled by a great, displaced unseen, perhaps even linked to ancient, grand cosmological perennial unseens.
The exhibition concluded with a finissage on 1st August 2026, featuring an evening of readings and performances by Yasmin Alrabiei, Jamal Mehmood, Bushra Mustafa Dunne, Aliya Orr, Mohammed Zain-Dada, SAIF, Brixton Masjid, and Sheikh Babikir. The event culminated in a ritual pilgrimage to one of London's oldest recurrent dhikr circles, where Sheikh Babikir — a pioneering figure of 1970s London Sufism — led attendees in recitations of Surah Yaseen, Dala'il Al Khayrat, and the Sudanese Samaniyya Hadra.
“HIJRA WALK: 1500 AH”, GROUP PERFORMANCE, 2026
On the first of August 2026 in the Hijri month of Safar on the eve of its 17th day, attendees of the SAFEHOUSE DE S.W.I.F.T.I.E. Finissage participated in a ritual group pilgrimage to London’s oldest recurrent dhikr circle led by Sheikh Babikir, an icon of 70s London Sufism. The Sheikh himself, was absent on the day in anticipation of an upcoming “Hijra Walk” from Mecca to Madinah. A migratory ritual performed by the Prophet ﷺ which has today become an equal parts sacred and commercial touristic wellness-attraction for pilgrims looking for an organic-styled alternative to the High-Speed Railways that now connect the two Holy Cities.
On that Saturday as pilgrims from the SAFEHOUSE sat on tube carriages towards Wilesden Green, it is very likely that groups like ours were simultaneously at that moment, in a desert performing an actual Hijra Walk: feeling the rumbling of a nearby train similar to ours — carrying blistering high-speed pilgrims, parallel to their mirage horizons. In an age of new networks, bodies and machines — the chariots that steer us heavenwards, rumble and shake; under the shadow of the same, ageing sun.
The performance title takes its name partly from the narration of 15th Century exegete Jalal Ad-Din Suyuti who reported that Islam would not survive beyond the messianic age of 1500AH, the current year; is 1448.
