Featuring 50 works of art including film, sculpture, painting, installations, photography and prints, many of which will be exhibited publicly in the UK for the first time, Age of Terror: Art since 9/11 presents IWM’s largest contemporary visual art exhibition to date.

Staged in IWM’s centenary year, the exhibition considers artists’ responses to war and conflict since the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 and features more than 40 British and international contemporary artists, including Ai Weiwei, Grayson Perry, Gerhard Richter, Jenny Holzer, Mona Hatoum, Alfredo Jaar, Coco Fusco and Jake & Dinos Chapman.

The catastrophic events of 9/11, a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks on the United States on the morning of Tuesday 11 September 2001, changed public perception and understanding of conflict. The complex issues surrounding the global response to 9/11, the nature of modern warfare and the continuing state of emergency in which we find ourselves have become compelling subject matter for contemporary artists.

Age of Terror takes 9/11 as its starting point; the catalyst which altered public perception of contemporary conflict. The artworks featured communicate a range of perspectives on subsequent events and their consequences. The exhibition highlights the crucial role of artists in representing contemporary conflict. Artists’ unique ways of communicating through their art provide different levels of understanding. The stories they tell, whether first or second-hand, come from alternative viewpoints not always reflected in the mainstream media.

The exhibition is presented through four key themes: artists’ direct or immediate responses to the events of 9/11; issues of state surveillance and security; our complex relationship with firearms, bombs and drones and the destruction caused by conflict on landscape, architecture and people. One of the highlights of the exhibition is Iván Navarro’s The Twin Towers (2011), exhibited in the UK for the first time. Navarro’s fluorescent light installations recede deep within themselves, creating the illusion of an infinite concave space. The exhibition also includes Ai Weiwei’s Surveillance Camera with Marble Stand (2015), in which the artist memorialises the apparatus of CCTV surveillance by replicating it in marble, evoking themes of paranoia and voyeurism and the omnipotence of a ‘policing’ authoritative force.

As part of the exhibition, IWM is also presenting a newly commissioned artwork by Kurdish Iraqi artist Walid Siti. Created especially for IWM, Floodland (2017) is a wall based installation that takes the form of a fictional map. Alongside the main exhibition galleries, Age of Terror presents Drone Shadow, a site- specific installation by James Bridle installed on the floor of the Atrium at IWM London.

Further highlights include: Dolls at Dungeness September 11th 2001 (2001) by Grayson Perry; Natura morta (bow-fronted cabinet) (2012) by Mona Hatoum; Circadian Rhyme 1 (2011) by Jitish Kallat;

Operation Atropos (2006) by Coco Fusco and a selection of photographs from Jamal Penjweny’s photographic series Saddam is Here (2009-2010). Other artists that will feature include Sierra Santiago, Sabine Moritz, kennardphillipps, Hans Peter Feldmann and Mahwish Chishty, amongst others.