Sara Jajou

is an Assyrian-Chaldean artist working at the intersection of contemporary histories and ancient futures. 


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Selected Works
  1. Shimane ‘d Bakhtathe 
  2. Apparitions
  3. I like to be a girl with fur
  4. (My mother's song) أغنية أمي
  5. I met my lover barefoot
  6. My Jidu tells good stories
  7. English-Sureth Dictionary
My Jidu tells good stories but his Jidu tells them better (2023)
Sara Jajou, My Jidu tells good stories but his Jidu tells them better, 2023, 8mm film, 13 min,  single channel video projection onto curtain installation. 
 My Jidu tells good stories but his Jidu tells them better features archival family footage of my father and aunt as children at their First Holy Communion party in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1984, filmed by a videographer from the time. It is accompanied by a narration of my Jidu, Petros Jajou, recollecting a childhood vision.
Sara Jajou, My Jidu tells good stories but his Jidu tells them better, 2023, 8mm film, 13 min,  single channel video projection onto curtain installation.

Exhibited in Go Home Yankee (and take me with you) at GalleryGalleryInc, Melbourne.
Sara Jajou, My Jidu tells good stories but his Jidu tells them better, 2023, 8mm film, 13 min,  single channel video projection onto curtain installation.

Exhibited in Go Home Yankee (and take me with you) at GalleryGalleryInc, Melbourne.


Sara Jajou, My Jidu tells good stories but his Jidu tells them better, 2023, 8mm film, 13 min,  single channel video projection onto curtain installation.

My Jidu, Petros Jajou standing alongside the work.

I first started interviewing my Jidu on film because I desperately wanted to hold onto his words and stories. I wanted to document and archive his version of Sureth language and lived experience in the motherland. I know less words than my parents and they know less than their parents and so on. I would visit my Jidu weekly and film using my father’s old Sony camcorder onto tapes. After we finished filming, on weekends Jidu would tell me new stories he hadn’t told me on camera. I realised cultural anxieties about loss had prevented me from listening to my Jidu’s words.

This work was installed in Go Home Yankee (and take me with you) (2023) at GalleryGalleryInc and Love Song (2024) at Bus Projects. It was also screened by MiyaMiya Film Club at Factory Theatre, Sydney in 2025.

The full video can be accessed at the bottom of this page.