A new display at the National Portrait Gallery mixes and matches images of Arabic speakers and their possessions to try to address a reluctance among people of Arab descent to be portrayed visually. IAN PROCTOR takes a look

ARABIC speakers from Brent are among the subjects of a new display at the National Portrait Gallery designed to help explore who they are. The exhibition's title, Chasing Mirrors, alludes to the brief of the project, which is to allow contributors to create a reflection of their own identity, age and ethnicity while purposely avoiding ordinary portraiture.

Visitors can study large-scale composite photographs, still life pictures of personal objects - laser etchings on paper or possessions such as a coin or an iPod - and textual portraits.

In addition, there are three plasma screens that cycle through portraits of young people from the Middle Eastern communities of Brent, Barnet and Ealing, some of whom have disguised their faces.

They are members of An-Nisa, an organisation established in 1985 to promote a British Muslim identity.

The free exhibition is produced by British artist and barber Faisal Abdu'Allah.

Faisal, whose studio lies below Faisal's Barbers, in High Street, Harlesden, said: "It's an educational project with a twist. There are five portraits in the show.

"I took photographs of 25 to 30 young Arabic-speaking people. Actually, I enabled them to take the photos themselves and we took a piece of their identity - an eye, a nose or an ear - and with a graphic designer reconstructed these into fictional characters, so the five are portraits of people who don't actually exist.

"They're seamless composites and some have six different people in there.

"I asked each participant to take an object out of their pockets and they are displayed opposite the photographs: iPod, pendant, trainer."

The original pictures of the volunteers are each flashed up in sequence for a matter of milliseconds on a screen elsewhere in the exhibition.

People may catch a glimpse of a facial characteristic used in the composite portraits, which have been named after the groups that took part: Tallo, a Somalian female group, Paiwand, Afghani boys, and An-Nisa, the Muslim organisation, which includes people from many different countries.

Mr Abdu'Allah explained there is almost an apprehension in Arabic culture about the representation of people in visual imagery - hence the historic lack in the gallery's collection of subjects from this background and the need to work to address the imbalance.

Chasing Mirrors is the start of a three-year project using funding through the John Lyon's Charity - part of The Harrow School Foundation that gives grants to help young people and adults from north-west London.

Chasing Mirrors, which begins tomorrow (Friday) and runs until January 10, 2010, forms part of a study to find out who is represented in the gallery's collection and who is not.