Mojtaba Amini explores the dual roles of artists as creators and social commentators, highlighting the tension between artistic freedom and societal pressures and the influence of political power on creative expression. His work is closely connected to his personal experiences and the violent histories of the materials he uses, which serve as metaphors for larger societal issues. Amini also critiques the ignorance and absence of serious curators in Iran’s art scene, pointing out that the dominance of galleries and commercial interests stifles true artistic expression and hinders significant artistic movements.

Davood Madadpoor: One of the concerns that have recently occupied my mind, and I would like to know your perspective on this, is the concept of being an artist. We who work and live in the Middle East, focusing on its social and political geography, might see our artistic activities take on a different hue, whether for me as a curator or you as an artist. Considering that this region is constantly undergoing social and political changes, how has your relationship with art evolved over time?

Mojtaba Amini: An artist’s beliefs and ideologies compel them to interpret and analyze political and social conditions. They then try to align these beliefs with their academic background, compare them with the realities of society, and ultimately intervene in their path forward. These alignments and contradictions can lead to growth, change, and evolution in the art and the artist’s character. Changes in society stem from the policies of power, and the citizen-artist, depending on their relationship with power, can present a form of art that constantly needs to evolve.

Pariya Ferdos[se]: Is this structural belonging a necessity? And if belonging to this structure limits the audience, can the artist find a way to overcome this limitation in presenting their work, both in the manner of presentation and in the scope of the audience?

Mojtaba: It would be better to answer this series of questions with Mikhail Bakhtin’s view on the artist, the audience, the artwork, and society. Bakhtin believes that Art is inherently and intrinsically social; when the external social environment influences art from the outside, it encounters an immediate and internal resonance within it. These two factors (art and society) are in no way alien forces that influence each other: the structure of one influences the structure of the other…Even that internal part of the artist that manifests in their work still has a social root in the artist’s subconscious, and the political or social situation of the environment provokes the artist to react in various ways. There will be no specific obligation, but there will be resistance from the artist regarding the form of presentation and the content of their works concerning environmental influences. Suppose the social conditions impact the artist as an individual in society, resulting in an artistic work and the construction of meaning. In that case, the reception of this meaning is completed in the same context where the work is created. The effort to transcend these limitations is somewhat subject to becoming fashionable.

Davood: By accepting the artist’s role, do you think we are caught up in a system that forces us to engage with it and consequently question and address it? Do you think the artist now, beyond the “traditional” role of being an artist, also assumes other roles?

Mojtaba: I think artists oscillate between the role they choose for themselves and their assigned role. Where society gives them meaning and credibility, compulsion will also be present in their work.

Davood: So, if I understand correctly, we should pause again to discuss the freedom and limitations of artists, correct? And have you, as an artist, accepted this compulsion from society? Should we call it compulsion, or perhaps a term like responsibility would better capture the sense of obligation?

Mojtaba: Artists are free, and no one has the right to tell them what to do or not do. However, when the artist, as Albert Camus says, becomes temporarily famous and derives their credibility from society and the people, they are compelled to stand with the people.

Pariya: Accepting that the artist, in your view, should stand with the people, to what extent is this possible, and if achieved, how impactful, inspirational, and effective can it be? Should the artist feel obligated to be influential?

Mojtaba: A famous artist with social capital can be influential to some extent by raising awareness and intervening in society.

Davood: Can you explain the nature and manner of these influences? Do these influences follow a particular direction?

Mojtaba: I think one of the best examples of intervention in power and the social influence of an Iranian artist is Mohammad Reza Shajarian due to his correct stance concerning the political-social events of recent years, which led to the banning of his works from state television and, more specifically, the removal of Rabbana from Iranian radio and television. His act raised many questions among the people, especially the religious part; it’s an example of the most accurate form of awareness-raising by a socially influential and well-known artist.

Pariya: Given that we have discussed the influence of political and social context and the dominant structure on the artist, how do you think, besides these factors, the intrinsic nature of the artist as a human being and their lived experience (in the form of psyche and body) impact the creation of their work?

Mojtaba: Any form of personalization in the artist’s work and the creation of art is something in continuity with others and resembles others. I mean that the creation of artistic work takes place in dialogue with others and under the influence of others in society. The “self” of the artist is not an independent existential entity; moreover, the artistic work is produced within a medium with history and past influences.

Pariya: In addition to the role and presence of the artist as a socio-political and artistic figure whose content is derived from the environment, in your work, the nature of the material and its becoming (in interaction with the environment and other materials) is evident. Where does this perspective and attention to the importance of the passage of time and the subjective nature of the material come from?

Mojtaba: I have previously answered this question elsewhere, in the book “It Transpired” Material and language have a nearly equal serious presence in my work. The material in my work has two aspects: personal and impersonal. Skin, fat, soap, and wool have a connection to my past and childhood as someone who lived in a rural farming family and witnessed the violence inflicted on animals, all of which these materials in my work are exactly “the remnants of violence” from the bodies of animals. In conjunction with the linguistic aspect of my work, which is a form of “language of violence” for me, they create that critical and socio-political meaning I intend from art. The other part of it is impersonal materials, similar to oil and tar, which are directly influenced by our political and social life, and it’s clear that no further explanation is needed here.

Pariya: And continuing, is it only the artist in this geography who should be expressive, or should other artistic roles like gallery owners, curators, dealers, etc., also be directly involved and function as an influential group or puzzle? How should this juxtaposition be?

Mojtaba: Certainly, all these elements that you mentioned are important and influential because for the three aspects of the artwork, the artist, and the audience to function correctly, the presence of all of them is necessary. However, in Iran, this coexistence does not work properly. There is no serious concept of a curator because galleries’ absolute dominance and the market’s logic do not feel the need for a curator’s presence. As a result, the artist has also lost their role and importance in this dominance. This is why we do not witness serious and specific art trends, and artists mostly produce commodities for this economic cycle.

Davood: In your opinion, what is the solution to break this flawed cycle? How can we create real convergence among artists, curators, gallery owners, and other factors to witness the formation of serious and meaningful trends?

Mojtaba: Breaking this cycle depends on the existence of independent and governmental institutions that support artists who are not inclined towards the market’s demands and tastes, as well as the existence of experimental, artist-run, and collaborative spaces.

Paria: In this process and interaction between local and global art, where do you see Iranian art in the big picture of global art?

Mojtaba: Due to the significant dispersion of the Iranian population worldwide, what is seen and presented as Iranian art is mostly within the realm of economy and market, and among this migrant population, there is nothing beyond that.

Dialogues is a place for being vocal. Here, authors and artists get together in conversations, interviews, essays and experimental forms of writing. We aim to create a space of exchange, where the published results are often the most visible manifestations of relations, friendships and collaborations built around Sumac Space. SUBSCRIBE NOW TO STAY CURRENT.

The post Artist’s Dilemma: Authorship, Power, and Social Responsibility—Mojtaba Amini in conversation with Pariya Ferdos[se] and Davood Madadpoor appeared first on Sumac Space.

[Scroll down for Farsi Version]

Mitra Soltani shares how her experiences with instability, lack of agency, and being a woman have shaped her projects. The conversation explores the evolving roles of the artist, the unique imprints they leave, and the intersection of gender, embodiment, gesture, and indigenous context in her work. The conversation not only addresses the duties and limitations of artists in society but also emphasizes the crucial role of the artist in shaping societal narratives, the power of juxtaposition, and the role of art professionals in bridging the local and global art scenes.

Davood Madadpoor: I want to start the conversation with a general question about being an artist. The concept of being an artist differs in local and international contexts. Coming from the Middle East (with a focus on its social and political geography), we may add a different flavor to the concept of being an artist through our artistic activities. Considering living in a region constantly undergoing social and political changes, how has your relationship with art evolved?

Mitra Soltani: In recent projects like Showing Transparency and A Number of Monuments, my direct experience with the subject has been central to my work. The daily experience of insecurity and lack of any form of stability is a state that deprives the human/artist of any sense of “agency.” For me, art’s function is a way to fight or resist the feeling of being objectified in such a situation. My work involves collecting archives, working with low-value or ephemeral materials, and exploring the lifestyle and art of local tribes and nomads.

Davood: Mitra, you made an interesting point! How can we reconcile the contradiction between the lack of agency for the artist and using artistic methods as a form of struggle?

Mitra: The example is local women’s way of life and art, inspiring this project. These women live in challenging conditions with countless restrictions imposed by society, family, and nature. However, all these limitations do not result in them being passive; instead, they impact their surroundings by employing art and rituals bit by bit. This impact deepens and spreads to the point where it even infiltrates their society’s most challenging and male-dominated structures. For me, defining agency is something like this.

Davood: By accepting the artist’s role, do you think we are engaged in a particular situation and system that compels us to interact with it, thus questioning and addressing it? Do you think the artist now has other roles beyond the “traditional” role of being an artist?

Mitra: I find this question challenging. I don’t fully understand the concept of an artist’s “traditional” role. Perhaps it means that the role of art in its traditional form was static and has changed over time. However, I’m afraid I have to disagree with this idea. Every example that comes to mind, whether historical or traditional, shows the artist constantly asking questions, challenging assumptions, and transforming. Therefore, the artist has not assumed a new role; what has changed is the way of thinking and expression, which has evolved with the times.

Regarding the first part of the question, since I consider freedom the most essential characteristic of art, I don’t think the artist is “compelled” in any field. However, I feel trapped in a system and am trying to find a way out.

Pariya Ferdosse: Given that you mentioned being trapped in a system, I will rephrase Davood’s first question differently: is this contextual attachment a necessity? And if this attachment to the context limits the audience, can the artist overcome this limitation in presenting their works? (Both in presentation and the audience)

Mitra: For me, the work was created within the context of my living environment, making it impossible to think or develop detachedly. Essentially, this compulsion and a sense of helplessness shaped the idea of the work. Regarding the audience limitation, it is natural for each work to have its audience. I have created many projects in nature, Indigenous environments, and public and urban spaces that have attracted a wide range of audiences, and works like this project probably have a more limited audience. In other words, I am not particularly insistent that all my works have the same or a broad audience.

Pariya: In this context, how does the intrinsic nature of the artist as a human being and their lived experience (in the form of a posture – both mental and physical) impact the production of the work, considering that some of your works remind me of Hannah Wilke and particularly Ana Mendieta? (I ask this question in line with your discussion about the lifestyle of nomadic women and how gender and embodiment have entered your methodology and working style.)

Mitra: It is hard to imagine an artist who can think about art or create something detached from their lived experience. The only question is how tangible this impact is. Essentially, this work and most of my projects are based on my lived experience in a native and ritualistic culture, both in subject matter and working method. I am inclined toward a form of conceptual art that relates to ritualistic actions, literature and nature are other essential components of my artistic practice. All these elements directly arise from the life of my mind and body in such a context. A specific example is works entirely based on ritualistic behaviour, and ritual cannot be understood from the outside. This topic underscores the importance of the body and gender in my works, as the relationship between body and gender and their dialogue with nature gives rise to rituals.

Davood: What differentiates an artist who feels responsible towards society from groups like politicians or social scientists who seek to imagine and create a new future?

Mitra: It is more logical to think about the similarities rather than the differences because this distinction is fundamental. An artist uses their freedom, sensitivity, and creativity. They can internalize issues and present intangible aspects. They move independently of the boundaries and limits of any discipline and thus deal not with explaining issues but with perceiving disasters or ideal situations. For example, my experience with some artworks with socio-political concerns (amid the constant flow of world news and information, which quickly trivializes every important matter) has been like a pause or break. This pause suggests different ways of seeing and thinking and keeps the hope for change alive through creativity.

Pariya: Assuming that you believe the artist should stand by the people, how feasible is this, and if achieved, how impactful, inspiring, and functional is it? Should the artists consider themselves obligated to be impactful?

Mitra: I believe the artist should not necessarily stand by the people, and I can’t define a “should” for the artist. I only know that art is closer to freedom than anything else, or at least it should be. Therefore, in a dictatorial society, the side of freedom is likely the opposite of power in most cases.

Regarding obligation, as I said, I cannot impose a duty on the artist; I think more about the commitment to art itself. I am still determining its functionality, which significantly depends on the social conditions in which we are active. Still, regarding inspiration, I agree that artistic endeavor is fundamentally inspiring, and we can think about its quantity and quality.

Pariya: In this context, is it only the artist who should be expressive, or do other artistic roles like gallery owners, curators, dealers, etc., also have a direct impact and function as a group or puzzle? How do you see this juxtaposition?

Mitra: Any form of expression or impact in art results from a set of choices. Naturally, in these choices, other players in the art field, such as gallery owners, curators, dealers, critics, etc., play an important role. As we have often seen, artists with prominent discourses have been marginalized while less significant productions have been highlighted. In the case of my projects, this juxtaposition has usually not been very successful because in such projects, the roles of others, including gallery owners, curators, etc., are more significant in presenting the work, and many challenges make them less inclined towards such projects.

Pariya: In this process and the interaction between local and global art, where do you see modern (contemporary) Iranian art in the big picture of global art?

Mitra: I am not very optimistic about works that have a closer connection to indigenous contexts. I only know a few successful examples of such art. By success, I mean being recognized in the global picture, as you mentioned. Because I think the global/Western view of other societies is still negligent and colonial in that they always pay attention to easily accessible and exotic images and ideas, not those that require a deeper understanding.

Mitra Soltani is an interdisciplinary artist interested in the relationship between literature, culture, and everyday life. She always uses objects that reflect the history and identity of the culture. Her work seeks new experiences of dealing with material and concept by exploring indigenous art practices and literature. She received a bachelor’s degree in painting from Shahed University of Tehran and a master’s degree in graphics from Tehran University of Art. Soltani has participated in more than thirty group exhibitions and art festivals and biennials and has made a number of projects in urban spaces and nature. Instagram

Pariya Fedros[se] is a curator, researcher, writer, and architect working on intersectional curatorial methodology and practices based on comparative methods, discourses, and texts. She started her career in art as an art director at age 26. After being cofounder and art director of two galleries, and because of her background in studying computer science, architecture, and philosophy (especially Eastern), she decided to extend her experiences to interdisciplinary research/text–oriented curating and architectural projects. She curated and designed Tehran’s Trilogy in three different exhibitions in Tehran’s central and ancient neighborhood (2017-2018). She was a researcher in the project exhibited in CAAM [Contemporary Art Museum in the Canary Islands]. Named Human All Too Human based on the ideas of the Iranian philosopher Suhrawardi (2018-2021). She curated an exhibition called Melencolia I with nine artists from four countries following comparative methodology and bridging art history inspiration, cinema, and psychology; this project took nine months (2022-2023). She was one of the writers in the book Rethinking the Contemporary Art of Iran by Hamid Keshmirshekan (2023). Recently, she’s been working on curational and publishing projects on different topics, such as Iranian literature, mysticism and immigration.

Dialogues is a place for being vocal. Here, authors and artists get together in conversations, interviews, essays and experimental forms of writing. We aim to create a space of exchange, where the published results are often the most visible manifestations of relations, friendships and collaborations built around Sumac Space. SUBSCRIBE NOW TO STAY CURRENT.

عاملیت، فعل (یا رویه‌های) روزمره به مثابه مقامتی در برابر حذف شدن

میترا سلطانی چگونگی شکل‌گیری پروژه‌هایش براساس تجربیات خود  از بی‌ثباتی، فقدان عاملیت و زن بودن را به اشتراک می گذارد. این گفتگو به بررسی نقش‌های رو به تکامل هنرمند، اثر منحصر به فردی که از خود به جا می‌گذارند، و تلاقی جنسیت، بدنمندی، ژست و بافتار بومی در آثار او می‌پردازد. این گفتگو نه تنها به وظایف و محدودیت‌های هنرمندان در جامعه می‌پردازد، بلکه بر نقش حیاتی هنرمند در شکل‌دهی روایت‌های اجتماعی، قدرت هم‌نشینی و نقش متخصصان هنر در پل زدن میان عرصه‌های هنری محلی و جهانی تأکید می‌کند.

داوود مددپور: می‌خواهم گفتگو را با یک سوال کلی درباره مفهوم هنرمند بودن آغاز کنم. من معتقدم که مفهوم هنرمند بودن در دو بافتار مختلف؛ محلی و بین‌المللی، متفاوت است. ما که از خاورمیانه (با تمرکز بر جغرافیای اجتماعی و سیاسی آن) می‌آییم، ممکن است با فعالیت‌های هنری‌مان رنگ و بویی دیگر به مفهوم هنرمند بدهیم. با توجه به زندگی در این منطقه که دستخوش تغییرات اجتماعی و سیاسی مداوم است، چگونه رابطه‌ی شما با هنر در طول زمان تکامل یافته است؟

میترا سلطانی: در پروژه‌های اخیرم مانند Showing Transparency و A Number of Monuments، تجربه‌ی مستقیم از موضوع کارم بوده است. تجربه‌ی روزمره‌ی ناامنی و فقدان هر شکلی از ثبات، وضعیتی است که انسان/هنرمند را از احساس هر گونه “عاملیت” خالی می‌کند. در حال حاضر، کارکرد هنر برای من راهی برای مبارزه یا مقاومت در برابر احساس شیء شدگی در چنین وضعیتی‌ست که این راه شامل جمع‌آوری آرشیوها، کار با متریال کم‌ارزش یا کم‌دوام و همچنین جستجو در شیوه‌ی زندگی و هنر اقوام و عشایر می‌شود.

داوود: میترا نکته‌ی جالبی را مطرح کردی! به نظرت چگونه می‌توان این تناقض بین تهی بودن از عاملیت هنرمند و بهره‌گیری از شیوه‌ی هنری به عنوان راهی برای مبارزه، را کنار هم قرار داد؟

میترا: مثال‌ش همان شیوه‌ای است که در شکل زندگی و هنر زنان محلی می‌بینم که در این پروژه نیز الهام بخش من بوده است. این زنان بیشتر در شرایطی بسیار دشوار و با محدودیت‌های بی‌شماری از سوی جامعه، خانواده و طبیعت زندگی می‌کنند. اما همه‌ی این محدودیت‌ها باعث نمی‌شود که آن‌ها از عملکرد انفعالی برخوردار شوند، بلکه با به‌کارگیری هنر و آیین‌ ذره‌به‌ذره، تاثیرگذاری بر محیط اطراف خود دارند. این تاثیرگذاری عمیق‌تر می‌شود و به گسترش می‌پیوندد تا جایی که حتی بر سخت‌ترین و مردانه‌ترین ساختارهای جامعه‌شان نیز نفوذ می‌کند. برای من، تعریف عاملیت یک چنین چیزی است.

داوود: با قبول و پذیرش نقش هنرمند، آیا فکر می‌کنید که درگیر یک شرایط و سیستم خاصی شده‌ایم که ما را مجبور به ارتباط با آن و در نتیجه، به پرسش کشیدن و مورد خطاب قرار دادن‌ش می‌کند؟ آیا فکر می‌کنید که هنرمند اکنون خارج از نقش “سنتی” هنرمند بودن، نقش‌های دیگری را نیز بر عهده دارد؟

میترا: خود این سوال به نظرم ایجاد چالش می‌کند. من مفهوم نقش “سنتی” هنرمند بودن را به‌طور کامل درک نمی‌کنم. شاید منظور این باشد که نقش هنر به شکل سنتی‌اش تنها کارکرد استاتیکی داشته باشد و در طول زمان این کارکرد تغییر کرده باشد. اما من با این ایده موافق نیستم. هر مثالی که به ذهنم می‌آید، هرچند ممکن است تاریخی یا حتی سنتی باشد، هنرمند را همواره در حال طرح پرسش، به چالش کشیدن فرضیات و تغییر و تحول می‌بینم. بنابراین، فکر نمی‌کنم که هنرمند اکنون نقش جدیدی پذیرفته باشد؛ آنچه تغییر کرده، شیوه فکر کردن و بیان است که به اقتضای زمان تغییر کرده است.

درباره بخش اول سوال، از آنجایی‌که مهم‌ترین ویژگی هنر را آزادی می‌دانم، فکر نمی‌کنم که هنرمند در هیچ زمینه‌ای “مجبور” باشد. اما به شخصه، احساس می‌کنم در یک سیستم گیر افتاده‌ام و در حال تلاش برای یافتن راهی به بیرون هستم.

پریا فردوس: با توجه به اینکه از سیستمی نام بردی که در آن گیر افتادی سوال اول داوود را طور دیگری مطرح می کنم؛ آیا این تعلق بافتاری یک امر الزامی است؟ و اگر تعلق به این بافتار، جامعه‌ی مخاطب را محدود کند آیا برای هنرمند راهی وجود دارد که این محدودیت را در ارایه ی آثار خود کنار بزند؟ (چه در ارایه و چه در جامعه‌ی مخاطبان)

میترا: دست کم برای من و در شرایطی که اثر مورد بحث ساخته شده، بله من ناچار بودم و امکان اینکه منفک از بستر زیستم فکر یا خلق کنم را نداشتم . اساسا همین ناچاری و یا احساسی از درماندگی ایده‌ی اثر را شکل داد. در مورد محدودیت مخاطب به نظر من طبیعی است که هر اثر محدوده‌ی مخاطب خود را داشته باشد. من پروژه های زیادی را در طبیعت، محیط های بومی و فضا های عمومی و شهری ساخته‌ام که طیف گسترده‌ای از مخاطب را در بر داشته است و آثاری شبیه این پروژه، که احتمالا مخاطب محدودتری دارد. به عبارت دیگر چندان اصراری ندارم همه‌ی آثارم مخاطب یکسان یا گسترده‌ای داشته باشند.

پریا: در این راستا خود ذاتی هنرمند به عنوان یک انسان و حیات زیسته‌اش (در قالب یک ژست -روان و تن-) چه تاثیری بر تولید اثر دارد با توجه به اینکه برخی از کارهای برای من یادآور هانا ویکله و به خصوص آنا مندیتا است؟ (این سوال را در راستای صحبت خودت در مورد شیوه‌ی زیست زنان عشایر مطرح می‌کنم و اینکه چه‌طور جنسیت و بدنمندی در روشمندی و شیوه‌ی کاری تو ورود کرده است)

میترا: تصورش برای من سخت است که هنرمندی بتواند فارغ از تجربه‌ی زیسته‌اش به هنر فکر کند یا چیزی خلق کند. شاید تنها این مساله باشد که تا چه میزان این تاثیر ملموس است یا نه. اساسا ایده ی این اثر و بیشتر پروژه های من کاملا بر اساس تجربه‌ی زیسته‌ام در یک فرهنگ بومی و آیینی پدید آمده است، چه از نظر موضوع و چه از لحاظ شیوه‌ی کار. من به نوعی از هنر مفهوم گرا که در ارتباط با کنش های آیینی است گرایش دارم و ادبیات و طبیعت دیگر مولفه های مهم در تمرین هنری من هستند. همه این موارد مستقیما از حیات ذهن و جسم من در چنین موقعیتی ناشی میشود. مثال مشخص آن آثاری است که کاملا بر اساس رفتار آیینی شکل میگیرد و آیین مساله ای نیست که بتوان بیرون آن ایستاد و درکش کرد. همین موضوع به اهمیت مسئله تن و جنسیت درآثار من اهمیت می‌دهد چرا که نسبت میان تن و جنسیت و همچنین نوع گفتگوی این دو با طبیعت است که آیین‌ها را پدید می‌آورد.

داوود: از منظر شما چه عامل یا عواملی باعث تفاوت بین یک هنرمندی که احساس مسئولیت در قبال جامعه می‌کند با گروهی مانند سیاستمداران یا دانشمندان علوم اجتماعی که در پی تصور کردن و ساختن آینده‌ای جدید هستند، وجود دارد؟

میترا: به نظرم حتی منطقی‌تر است که به شباهت‌ها فکر کنیم تا تفاوت‌ها، به این دلیل که این تفاوت بسیار اساسی است. هنرمند آزادی، حساسیت و خلاقیتش را به کار می‌گیرد. او می‌تواند مسائل را درونی کند و جوانب غیر قابل لمس را به نمایش بگذارد. او مستقل از حدود و مرزهای هر دیسیپلینی حرکت می‌کند و از این رو نه به تشریح مسائل بلکه به ادراک فاجعه یا موقعیت ایده‌آل می‌پردازد. برای مثال، تجربه‌ی خودم از بعضی آثار هنری با دغدغه‌ی سیاسی-اجتماعی (در حرکت مدام میان اخبار و اطلاعات جهان امروز؛ موقعیتی که هر مهمی را به سرعت به امری پیش‌پا افتاده فرو می‌کاهد.) شبیه به یک وقفه یا مکث بوده است؛ وقفه‌ای که شیوه‌های دیگر دیدن و اندیشیدن را پیشنهاد می‌دهد و با کمک به خلاقیت، امید به تغییر را زنده نگه می‌دارد.

پریا: با پذیرش اینکه از نظر تو هنرمند بایستی سمت مردم بایستد تا چقدر این امر شدنی‌ست و در صورت تحقق چقدر تاثیر گذار، الهام‌بخش و کارکردی است؟ و آیا هنرمند بایستی خود را موظف به تاثیرگذار بودن بداند؟

میترا: نظر من الزاما این نیست که هنرمند باید سمت مردم بایستد و اساسا نمی توانم بایدی برای هنرمند تعریف کنم. من تنها می‌دانم که هنر بیش از هر چیز به آزادی نزدیک است یا بهتر است باشد. بنابراین در جامعه‌ای دیکتاتوری احتمالا در بیشتر موارد سمت آزادی سمت مخالف قدرت است.

در مورد موظف بودن هم چنان که گفتم نمی‌توانم وظیفه ای برای هنرمند قائل باشم، در مورد خودم می‌توانم بگویم بیشتر به تعهد نسبت به خود هنر می‌اندیشم. در باره‌ی کارکردی بودن آن مطمئن نیستم و خیلی بستگی به شرایط اجتماعی که در آن فعال هستیم دارد اما درباره‌ی الهام بخش بودن، موافقم که تلاش هنری اساسا الهام‌بخش است و می‌توان درباره‌ی کمیت و کیفیت آن فکر کرد.

پریا: و در ادامه آیا تنها هنرمند هست که در این جغرافیا باید بیانگر باشد یا باقی سمت‌های هنری مانند گالری‌دار، کیوریتور، دیلر و … هم تاثیرگذاری مستقیم و به شکل یک گروه و یا پازل را دارند؟ یا با تعبیری این کنارهم‌قرارگیری (juxtaposition) به نظرت چگونه باید باشد؟

میترا: فکر می‌کنم به هر شکلی از بیان‌گری یا تاثیرگذاری در هنر فکر کنیم حاصل مجموعه‌ای از انتخاب‌هاست. در این انتخاب‌ها طبیعتا بازیگران دیگر عرصه هنر همچون گالری‌دار، کیوریتور، دیلر، منتقد و.. نقش مهمی دارند. چنانکه بارها دیده‌ایم هنرمندانی با گفتمان برجسته به حاشیه رفته و تولیداتی نه چندان مهم در معرض توجه قرار گرفته‌اند. در مورد پروژه‌های من معمولا این کنار هم قرارگیری چندان موفق نبوده است، زیرا در چنین پروژه‌هایی هم نقش‌های دیگر از جمله گالری‌دار، کیوریتور و.. اهمیت بیشتر در ارائه اثر دارند و هم چالش‌های بسیاری وجود دارد که آنان را کمتر به چنین پروژه‌هایی متمایل می‌کند.

پریا: در این روند و تعامل هنر محلی و جهانی، هنر مدرن (امروز) ایران را کجای مختصات تصویر بزرگ هنر جهانی (big picture) می‌بینی؟

میترا: در مورد آثاری که به زمینه‌های بومی تعلق بیشتری دارند، من خیلی خوشبین نیستم. یعنی چندان نمونه‌های موفقی از نوع هنر را نمی‌شناسم. موفقیت منظور به رسمیت شناخته شدن به قول شما در مختصات تصویر جهانی. چرا که به نظرم نگاه جهانی/غربی به جوامع دیگر سهل‌انگارانه و همچنان استعماری است. به این معنا که همواره به تصاویر و ایده‌هایی سهل‌الوصول و اگزوتیک توجه نشان می‌دهند نه ایده‌هایی که به شناخت عمیق‌تر وابسته است.

The post Agency and Quotidian Practices as Resistance Against Omission—Mitra Soltani in conversation with Pariya Ferdos[se] and Davood Madadpoor appeared first on Sumac Space.

A journey that goes from the Mind or Mend the Gap, the 3-day exhibition and performances that took place in June 2024, as an output of the seminar Mobilizations (SuSe2024), held by Dr. Marianna Liosi, to the Listening into Hope radio broadcast that was shown on the 9th of July 2024 at the Refuge Worldwide Radio, as part of Dr. Anton Kats’ seminar Great Sound (SuSe2024). With the participation of several practitioners in the radio broadcast Listening into Hope, new narratives, sensitivities, practices, and spaces of resistance emerge.

Enjoy the listening!
Listening into Hope. Spatial Strategies

In this porous world, gaps form and dissolve as cracks between cliffs, spaces between words, or air currents weave through our lives, revealing hidden possibilities and challenges. “Mind the gap,” a warning that creates a certain urgency; “Mend the gap,” care that sews common or individual wounds. Through their works, artists aim to pay attention, search, and focus on those potential leakages as spaces of expression: to be filled, to perfect, to create anew–or, if not, then to traverse their inevitable presence. In the Mind or Mend the Gap (23 – 26 June 2024; Donaustrasse 84 12043, Berlin), students focused on the transformative potential of affect and empathy as tools for individual or collective mobilization online and offline.

Emma Lang’s audio installation magnified otherwise imperceptible experiences into limitless narratives through a poetic overexpression. Amanda Bobadilla’s political cartography had fragmented and reassembled satellite maps, tracing historical and personal migrations and challenging viewers to rethink geographic and socio-political boundaries. Bianca Lee’s drawings reflected the mutable nature of memory through the lens of Arctic cloudberries, using confabulation to reconstruct reality in response to trauma. Xiao Zhang’s paper rubbings of bone shapes and meat fat remnants addressed food scarcity and economic inequality, highlighting the deep social imprints of deprivation and abundance. Nischal Khadka’s installation brought the musical instruments Nāyākhi and its sounds to delve deeper into the historical and cultural context of ritualistic drum sounds of Kathmandu Valley, which were at risk of extinction. xindi’s installation and the sound performance represented suppressed voices and censored expressions through different plants and narrative poetry, evoking the fragility and resilience of self-expression.

A cooperation between M.A. Raumstrategien Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee, Sumac Space and Vereinigung für genreverbindende Kunstprojekte; Coordinated by Dr. Marianna Liosi

Text: Dr. Marianna Liosi
Photo credit: Xiao Zhang

The post Mind or Mend the Gap merges into Listening into Hope appeared first on Sumac Space.

In au-delà, Zahra Zeinali uses the prism of her experiences as an Iranian immigrant to examine themes of exile, displacement, and trauma. She employs it to explore the sensations and memories of loneliness and vulnerability, expressing the agony and concussion of being uprooted and forced to navigate an unknown backdrop.

In the following text, we extend an invitation to read about four series featured in the exhibition: Perdu (2020), REM (2021), Elle ferma les yeux (2021), and Adaptation (2021-2022).

The Perdu series (2020) marked a significant turning point in the Zahra Zeinali’s life. After spending seven years in Paris, she returned to Iran with a strong desire to rediscover a sense of belonging that had eluded her in her adopted country. However, upon her return, she found that both she and her homeland had undergone significant changes, leading to a profound disconnection between them. This resulted in a feeling of rootlessness, characterized by loneliness, emptiness, and uncertainty.

During this period of self-exploration, Zeinali focused on questions of identity, reflecting on her past and present self, while also delving into her inner world with great curiosity. This introspective journey revealed a hidden realm of depth and complexity that had silently accompanied her throughout her life, unknown to her.

In her paintings from this phase, the use of the color was notably limited to white, red, and black hues. She believed that vibrant colors represented the external world, whereas the inner world required a more muted representation.

The narrative of her work revolved around a central figure, a young girl, surrounded by personal artifacts such as vintage dolls from Parisian second-hand stores, self-made masks, fabrics, and theater-inspired puppets. These elements were arranged in front of a dimly lit backdrop, evoking a theatrical stage where the unfolding drama takes place in an obscure black box, hidden from the audience’s full view. This symbolic approach conveyed the idea that human perception provides only a partial glimpse of truth, much like witnessing only a fraction of events backstage. Zeinali assumed the role of a theatrical director, skillfully orchestrating these representations on the stage to manifest various states of mind and inner emotions—a manifestation rooted in a cognitive perspective.

The series REM (2021) and Elle ferma les yeux (2021-2022) continued to focus on the inner world she had discovered—a realm characterized by contradictions, fears, and dreams, akin to the enigmatic nature of dreams or nightmares. Zeinali translated this peculiar inner world onto canvas, naming the collection “PARADOX SLEEP (REM),” which denotes the state between deep slumber and wakefulness, where reality and imagination converge, echoing the essence of her paintings.

The paintings in these series featured doll-like figures often shrouded in shadows, resembling theatrical scenes. The overall outlook towards the world and reality was somewhat pessimistic and bitter. The backgrounds of the paintings avoided depicting specific locations or spaces, emphasizing the emergence of the characters from darkness, like figures on a theater stage. Zeinali’s choice of colors remained limited, with a focus on using acrylic as her medium, resulting in expressive and emotionally intense paintings from subjective perspectives.

The series Elle ferma les yeux (2021) was influenced by a deeply unfortunate event in her life toward the end of 2021, leaving its impact until late 2022. During this period, new colors, such as blue and yellow, were introduced, imbued with symbolic meanings. As a result, the artworks gradually incorporated surrealistic procedure, prompting contemplation on death and the intricacies of the human subconscious. This phase revealed Zahra Zeinali’s newfound sense of independence in her expression.

The essence of each entity’s existence, as perceived by the artist, holds a bitter and disconcerting truth. As she delved deeper into exploration, more unsettling facets of this truth surfaced. This newfound understanding of the world significantly influenced the artist’s actions and mindset, leading her to question the very meaning and purpose of life.

She grapples with the daunting task of navigating life in a peculiar and fearsome world. This internal struggle gave rise to the Adaptation (2021-2022) series. In these artworks, subtle shifts in the main characters’ dispositions are portrayed, reflecting a sense of acceptance of one’s circumstances and a confrontation with enigmatic and unsettling realities. This phase is deemed crucial and challenging, as it aids in reconciling the artist’s relationship with both herself and the world.

Technically, Zahra Zenali embarks on a journey into unknown territory by using relatively larger canvases for the first time. The characters in the artworks move from unfamiliar spaces to more familiar places that remind us of untouched nature. The artworks show the coexistence of unique entities and characters, blending together harmoniously in a single frame, without any resistance or conflict against each other. Her subsequent works, while not explicitly labeled as part of the Adaptation series, continue to be strongly influenced by her explorations during this period.

_ In conversation with Zahra Zeinali

Zahra Zeinali (b. 1975) completed her bachelor’s degree in painting from the Islamic Azad University of Tehran and worked as an art instructor for fifteen years. She developed an interest in photography and studied analog photography at the House of Iranian Photographers. In 2012, Zahra relocated to Paris to continue her artistic journey as a painter. Later, in 2022, she completed her studies at the EFET Photographie École. This milestone prompted her to explore merging the two techniques in her recent works. Additionally, she commenced her role as an art teacher for children and young students at Le Cercle des Arts in 2022, allowing her to tap into the realm of childhood inspiration. 

Zeinali has participated in several groups and solo exhibitions, including the recent Le Pays des Merveilles, Le Monde Invisible at Galerie Claire Corcia, and Alerte Rouge at Galerie Linda Farrell, Femme Vie Liberté at Galerie Sahar K. Boluki, Artcité à Fontenay, Comparaison au Grand Palais Éphémère, and Figuration Critique à Salon de Dessin Paris, among others.

A:D: Curatorial runs by two young curators from the USA and Ukraine, Christy Woody and Maria Isserlis, the mission of the space is to focus on creating a platform for today’s innovative artists to be heard in a non-commercial environment. Inviting artists from around the world, we aim to keep the cultural bridges open for collaborations, exchanges, and the development of new works. Through young, vibrant voices in the current art and music scene, we would like to thoughtfully reflect on the current political, social and environmental climate and progress with a successful example of cooperation in the field of art and culture in Berlin.

The post Zahra Zeinali:au-delà—Zahra Zeinali in Conversation with Davood Madadpoor appeared first on Sumac Space.

In this exchange between Davood Madadpoor, Katharina Ehrl, and Ali Eslami, Eslami delves into his ongoing project “False Mirror” and its implications for understanding the intersection of virtual reality, identity, memory, and artistic practice. He reflects on how “False Mirror” has evolved from a speculative future to a complex parallel world, intricately intertwined with his daily experiences. Through meticulous attention to detail and the exploration of memory within the virtual realm, Eslami challenges conventional notions of truth and expands the possibilities of artistic expression.

Davood Madadpoor / Katharina Ehrl: I’m assuming you’re thinking a lot about futures by engaging on such a lengthy project, False Mirror, which began in 2017. As an extension of that, I’m saying you’re thinking about every detail of this future. As you mentioned, the primary motivation for this project is wondering if humans would ever be supposed to live in a virtual world and how we would do so. What about this future intrigues you? What is it about this that compels you to devote all of your time to it?

Ali Eslami: I think that’s how I saw it initially, as a pre-construction of a future that could happen, but the more I spent time building it, the more it became intertwined with the present and my daily experiences in life. So it’s kind of hard to think of False Mirror as a future world at the moment, but for me, it implies a space that contains its temporality in which I respond to it by contributing my time to this parallel world.

The concept of expansion, engineering of a new reality, this whole process has remained the core of my practice for a long time. The more I tend to model every detail and function within this world, the more complex and sometimes out of control it gets. It has become a sandbox reality that I can rebuild, grow, modify, archive, and play with all at once.

To a great extent, it’s similar to a kid in a playground playing with modular toys (Lego); the tools at hand and building blocks can be reshaped through imagination. They can be torn apart, destroyed, rebuilt, and expanded.

As a practice, this engineering of other worlds brings a lot of exciting methods and reflections to the reality of life itself. So it functions almost like a feedback loop between the real and unreal. And I think that’s the main reason it remains an exciting parallel world to work on and approach as a process that’s always ongoing rather than a project with an end goal.

Besides, it’s pretty amazing and fun at times to see different aspects of the world that become incompatible and cause various bugs and glitches, which can be quite inspiring when it happens! That’s something I’ve learned by making this world: that it always has certain unstable corners/moments in which things fall apart and get loose, and I find it quite fascinating and surprising when it happens.

For example, two years ago, I encountered this glitch (because of an error in my programming) that would load different spaces all together overlapping each other (instead of unloading the previous ones), resulting in multiplied spaces that in VR was a magnificent experience in itself!

DM / KE: In False Mirror, not only is the world expanding, but the body is also evolving, acquiring skills, becoming more capable, and becoming more alienated. Do you believe that this new identity—or as we’ll refer to it, this new virtual identity—is needed to escape reality? Can’t we just be ourselves in this fictitious world?

AE: I think the whole idea of the body, at least in my work, is an element that gets explored in relation to its virtual surroundings. So these bodies we talk about have the role of a pawn. They are vessels that allow anyone to embody and navigate the new world through them. Almost like what a car is for us. We drive the car, and as driver, we become one with the vehicle itself.

When I put the VR headset on and start an experience in False Mirror through a modular posthumous body, I am indeed still my (real) self, but the mechanics of my body has been replaced by a new form. I’m curious how these virtual bodies that we take over can merge with those who inhabit them. Identity becomes a question mark when anyone can embody a character in False Mirror.

This aspect of virtual identities sometimes gets overblown in the mainstream digital culture, where it’s mainly being advertised as a space to ‘freely be yourself’. However, this doesn’t take into account how much of your new body, which represents you in these worlds, shapes who you are and, to some extent, blurs with your own identity.

DM / KE: The future is derived from what was and what is. How are memories connected to these alternate realities you create? Or what role do they play?

AE: The fact is that the project’s been growing since 2017. I have always had a tendency to record and archive as much as I can because having an archive of memories of a world in expansion is a fantastic tool for thinking and reflecting back on quite deep levels and layers of the ground reality that is being shaped around you.

In fact, in this video performance I’m showing at The Tellers, I explore the memory within the context of False Mirror. The sandbox notion of this world allows us to rethink what memory can be like. For instance, throughout my walkthrough video I reveal some memories of things that never happened or have a chance of happening in the future!

Another way of playing with it is that memories in this example are pinned to virtual zones within spaces, and they can only be seen/revisited by navigating to those zones. This makes me think about what a world might look like if we could only access our memories based on our location in the world. In that world, would we keep moving from place to place to access more memories or the other way around?

No matter how ridiculous it might sound, one can speculate about it in a virtual world like False Mirror.

DM / KE: You stated that reality becomes more fictional as your artistic practice develops; I’m curious as to where you wake up in the morning. In the False Mirror or your Amsterdam apartment?

AE: I think the distinction between fiction and non-fiction is itself a human construct. What we call non-fiction or ground truth is based on a lot of things we take for granted.

The same concept applies to a virtual world. The more time spent, the more presence, makes it more accurate, and of course it becomes more real to someone like me—who spent lots of time creating and, at the same time, experiencing it—than to a person who’s only spent 1 hour in there.

Another way to look at it is by comparison with how social media feels like a world of its own. When I scroll through Instagram while I’m on a train ride, I get sucked completely into its world and, whether I like it or not, my brain functions and even feels things differently in those states. And in effect, we constantly shift between these micro realities in our routine daily life.

DM / KE: How do you perceive False Mirror’s position as an artwork? I came to this question through the intersection of several concepts; in one sense, if you have a title such as Virtual Reality Developer, it implies that others might wonder whether False Mirror is a game. Additionally, during our discussions about putting together the exhibition The Tellers, we came across the need for additional technology and skills to show how virtual reality works, even though I was doubtful that we have the necessary infrastructure to do so.

AE: I think the process of world-building in general, whatever the medium, is an artistic practice. It requires the involvement of so many different disciplines such as architecture, game design, sound, system design, cybernetics, and so forth. As a result, all these come together and merge with the power of imagination. 

But speaking of media—in my case VR as an emerging technology—I’m aware of how demanding presentation of the work can be technically. This makes the presentation of the work to a large extent inaccessible. And that’s what I found challenging in my artistic practice. And in response, I realized that my outcomes/results don’t have to stay in the VR headset waiting to be experienced. My source of work remains in VR, but the outcome can become manifest in different media such as live performance in video format, text, films, or even a physical installation.

Of course, the final experience of the work itself is radically different when it’s being watched instead of experiencing hands-on VR. But at the same time, there are things that one can express in a video format that are not possible in VR, and I try to respond to these constraints in a way that, as far as possible, doesn’t compromise the core conceptual intentions within the work.

DM / KE: During our conversation, you said that you’re shifting to narrative video. You mentioned trying to deal with the untranslatability of various aspects of reality when attempting to incorporate it into a False Mirror world, both technically and emotionally. Could you elaborate on this and discuss your new approach?

AE: As I said, the core of my practice remains in VR (where the world is being built). But video, which is a new field for me, opens up a lot of great potential for storytelling and narrative, which I can’t express otherwise.

The notion of editing and how you can play with time fragments is almost inaccessible in VR. In a VR experience, everything happens in real-time and moment to moment. In a video, temporality is more liquid and can be shaped to tell a broader narrative. On the other hand, I’ve also been working with VR for seven years already and I feel this shift can be quite refreshing and there are a lot of amazing things to learn that I can grow further with. Meanwhile, making a physical installation that carries the video work is another thing I’m exploring that adds a new dimension to the creative process. Some aspects of the narrative and world-building can be maintained in the real world or emphasized using tangible physical objects that respond to the overarching narrative of the film.

Ali Eslami is an artist and engineer from Iran based in Amsterdam who has been active and experimenting with virtual reality since 2014. His work involves long-term research projects that build up and grow over time through speculations and world-building by carefully observing the nature of reality, the human condition, and constructs that are taken for granted, and trying to push it further to extreme or twisted thresholds.
An obsession with cybernetics deriving from his engineering background leads to creating worlds in aspects of both form and function. These experiences manifest as realities that blur fictional and non-fictional narratives, striving to articulate possible futures while questioning the restraints of space, time, and body.
In 2016, his VR project won the IDFA DocLab Award for Best Immersive non-fiction and in 2020 the Golden Calf for Best interactive at the Nederlands Film Festival (Nerd_Funk). Aside he is co-curator at STRP Festival and programme advisor at IDFA Doclab.

Dialogues is a place for being vocal. Here, authors and artists get together in conversations, interviews, essays and experimental forms of writing. We aim to create a space of exchange, where the published results are often the most visible manifestations of relations, friendships and collaborations built around Sumac Space. SUBSCRIBE NOW TO STAY CURRENT.

The post Ali Eslami–On the Creation of Virtual Spaces with their own Temporality–Ali Eslami in conversation with Katharina Ehrl and Davood Madadpoor appeared first on Sumac Space.

In conjunction with the exhibition The Tellers, Villa Romana hosted a one-day symposium on Saturday, 19 March 2022, starting at 11 am. The symposium aimed to propose and discuss key points of the exhibition through contributions by Nat Muller (Independent curator, writer, and academic), and Santiago Zabala (Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain), followed by a public discussion and concluded with a lecture-performance by Mohamed Abdelkarim.

Listen to recorded audio on Radio Papesse by clicking here.

Programme

11:00
Welcome by Angelika Stepken, director of Villa Romana
Davood Madadpoor, Introduction to the platform Sumac Space

11:15
Katharina Ehrl, Introduction to the symposium

11:30 [Cancelled]
Raffaella Baccolini, Memory, Language, and Storytelling as Resistance.

Baccolini’s contribution will analyze the role and importance of language, communication, storytelling, and memory as forms of resistance. Classical, traditional dystopia often employs the convention of a rediscovered book from the past as one of the tools that awaken the dystopian protagonist(s). By looking at how contemporary critical dystopias have renewed and updated the convention of the forbidden book, she will analyze the importance of language and storytelling – and their link with communication, memory, and negotiation – not only as a means of helping the protagonists survive but also as a way of withstanding the dystopian world. Language, its recovery, and its use represent the need to strive for a difficult, complex resistance that often starts from the acceptance of a negotiated (inter)dependence. In the present climate of racism and hatred, which manifests itself through the dehumanizing policies that black people, migrants, and refugees face throughout the world today, these works offer a timely reflection on literacy and negotiation as tools of resistance. They are also what is necessary to maintain hope even in extreme conditions of oppression.

12:30
Santiago Zabala, Where is the Future? Warnings through Art

Philosophy is a warning, that is, a request to become involved in signs that concern our future. These signs can refer to our existence, environment, or even politics. The problem is that, contrary to predictions, warnings are weak, vague, and unclear concepts (in the form of an announcement) that are often ignored. This is probably why they are frequently discarded as useless or insignificant – much like environmentalists, philosophers, and artists – when in fact they are vital. Unlike an objective representation in the mind, warnings can be understood only through interpretation, that is, an involvement that concerns our existence. Recent philosophies of animals, plants, and insects are branches of this philosophy since they also warn us of specific issues that we ignore such as biodiversity loss or climate change. What often emerges in great art, as well as in other realms of human practice, is not a representation of beauty but rather the disclosure of an event that is invisible to our aesthetic senses, intellectual skills, and cultural interests. Today art often works better than scientific announcements as a way to reveal warnings. This is not an effect merely of the artists’ ability to create beauty, but rather of the intensity and depth of their works. Documentary photographs of the ongoing ice caps melting, for example, can be truthful but are rarely as powerful as the works of art that address this emergency. When art addresses our warnings, the future reveals itself.

14:30
Nat Muller, Futuring is a Verb: Looking for Possibility through Ruins in Contemporary Art from the Middle East

This presentation puts two premises to the test by drawing on the work of contemporary artists from the Middle East including: Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour, Lebanese artists and filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Kuwaiti artist Monira Al Qadiri, and Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari. Firstly, it asks whether ruins can be considered as motifs of futurity rather than being markers of decay and entities locked in the past. Secondly, it asks what type of speculative images, imaginaries, and political positions are required to unlock this potential and see the future through the wreckage. How does the extension of the ruin’s temporality in a forward-looking way change its meaning, and what kind of social dreaming can be tied into it? What novel possibilities does such an approach offer historically, politically, and artistically?

16:00
Public discussion moderated by Nat Muller

Lecturers’ Bios

Raffaella Baccolini teaches Gender Studies and American and British Literature at the University of Bologna, Forlì Campus. She has published numerous articles on women’s writing, dystopia and science fiction, trauma and memory, modernism, and young adult literature. She has edited several volumes, including Transgressive Utopianism: Essays in Honor of Lucy Sargisson (with Lyman Tower Sargent, 2021), Utopia, Method, Vision: The Use Value of Social Dreaming (also with Tom Moylan, 2007) and Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination (with Tom Moylan, 2003). She is currently working on kindness, solidarity, and feminist education as utopian, political acts.

Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He is the author of many books, including Being at Large: Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020) and Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency (Columbia University Press, 2017). His opinion articles have appeared in The New York Times, Al-Jazeera, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as other international media.

Nat Muller is an independent curator and writer with expertise in contemporary art from the Middle East. She is a regular contributor to international art publications such as Ocula and Hyperallergic and has edited a variety of monographs on artists including Walid Siti (Kehrer Verlag, 2020), Nancy Atakan’s Passing On (Kehrer Verlag, 2016), and Sadik Kwaish Alfraji (Schilt Publishing, 2015). She has curated video and film screenings for Rotterdam’s International Film Festival (NL), Norwegian Short Film Festival (NO), International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (DE), and Video D.U.M.B.O (USA), among others. Recent exhibition projects include the Danish Pavilion for the 58th Venice Biennale (2019), featuring Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour and the group show Trembling Landscapes: Between Reality and Fiction at Amsterdam’s Eye Filmmuseum (2020). She is completing an AHRC-funded PhD at Birmingham City University on science fiction in contemporary art from the Middle East.

Video: Giulia Lenzi

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The New Gods is a mixed media artwork series by Egyptian artist Omar Houssien. Here the ancient deities of Egypt are reinterpreted through the lens of contemporary society, culture, and symbology. We see the god of disorder, Seth, as an Arab Spring protester, the goddess of joy and femininity, Hathor, as a belly dancer, the supreme Ra as an omnipotent president, or Nephthys as an influencer. 

Combining the languages of pop art, advertising, and popular culture, the artist aims to create a critical reflection of contemporary and Egyptian society, as well as to offer a vision that is locally grounded, given that the Egyptian gods have become among the fantasy genre’s stock figures. All artworks were made between 2013 and 2019, during and as a reaction to the Arab Spring. 

Each artwork (Mixed Media, 22×35 cm) is accompanied by a bronze engraved plaque (Faux-bronze, 10×15 cm), with a description of the deity. Similar to museum labels, each plaque had “technical information” such as major cult centers and names in hieroglyphs. The descriptions were written in a way that would accurately describe the deity, but push the viewer to draw parallels to the version represented.

Conveniently, we will take the image of the pyramid to visually convey the power stratification of The New Gods: from the supreme gods representing the state and military (such as Ra), then gods serving the government in various ways (like propaganda and religion), followed by independent shapers of the society (like Horus and Shu), and lastly ones outside the mainstream power.

Curator Srđan Tunić speaks with the artist about each individual god for Sumac Space in order to understand their past and contemporary image.

RA: listen to me, I’ll tell you… (2014)

Srđan Tunić: Ra had supreme power over the existing world. He was also the god of the sun and the kings. According to some interpretations, he was also the king of the gods and the creator of the universe. He was often presented with a falcon’s head, like Horus, with whom he was also paired as the god of the sky.

Omar Houssien: InThe New Gods, he swaps his falcon head for that of an eagle (the official emblem of Egypt and several Middle-Eastern and African countries) appearing as a generic politician, ruler, president, but – he is the face of the government. While he maintains the supreme power, unlike other gods (except for Seshat), the symbol is not on or behind his head, but on the podium, featuring the sun disk and the coiled serpent. With this detail, I wanted to pinpoint that it’s not the focus on the person, but on the position itself, the institution of the government. Ra is whoever stands behind that podium. In nurturing the personality cult, it doesn’t matter who takes the position, it is always the same (Ra).

AMUN: the people and the army are one hand (2013)

Srđan: One of the major deities of ancient Egypt, Amun was omnipresent but invisible, self-created and a creator deity. He was often paired with Ra (as Amun-Ra), making him the ultimate chief deity, and protector of the poor. His headdress has two vertical plumes which he (or it?) kept in your image.

Omar: I see him as the Egyptian military: omnipresent but never in the spotlight, maintaining the monopoly (and consequently the corruption) of power, and creating a model (one is forced) to be associated with as a dark presence looming over every government and president elected by the citizens. Historically, in order to succeed in ruling Egypt, you need somehow to appease the army. On the other side, it can be seen as an open and publicly-owned institution – one of Egypt’s few platforms for success based on meritocracy and social mobility. Military service is mandatory for all Egyptian men and so, the army IS the people. It is also one where the traditional protection of the poor is frequently implied. The military is a synonym for efficiency and is the country’s handyman, doing everything that needs to be done, also setting the desired role model for an average citizen.

OSIRIS: deep state (2014)

Srđan: One of the most important gods for understanding ancient Egypt’s obsession with the afterlife, Osiris was the god of life, death, afterlife, and resurrection, among others. Pharaohs were identifying with him, hoping to join him and become one in death. Traditionally depicted with green skin (color of vegetation and rebirth) and distinctive Atef crown. And this is the only god you depicted from the back, why?

Omar: Purposefully simple and mystical, I see Osiris as the deep state of Egypt. The power behind the power, completely in control yet cloaked from the public. While Ra was the role model during one’s lifetime, Osiris was celebrated in order to provide eternal (after)life. In such a system, where rulers were living for eternity, society doesn’t change and stagnates, being sacrificed to achieve this goal, like in necropolitics.

SOBEK: bow to me (2014)

Srđan: Sobek is the god of the Nile and the army, which had a very fluid and complex nature: at the same time benevolent and dangerous, warding off evil and protecting innocents, sacred and feared (as Sekhmet). Like head and tail on a coin, he embodies an army’s protection and terror aspects. Crocodiles in the Nile river were seen with the same double role: they were killing the pests hurting the crops, but also could eat humans.

Omar: In my interpretation, Sobek kept the crocodile appearance and the double-edged sword role. Posing and vested as a generic religious figure, his clothing combines elements of Christianity (white and purple robe) and eastern religions (halo, red ribbon, solar disk, and other attributes). Fluid and malleable as religion, bringer of peace, and fundamentalist terrorism, Sobek embodies religious authority which is responsible for a variety of conflicts in the Middle East. I think the religious authorities (embodied by the Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafist movement) were also pivotal in undermining the Liberal revolutionary movements post-Arab Spring.

BASTET: caTV (2013)

Srđan: The goddess of Lower Egypt and domesticated cats, also a protector against evil spirits and contagious diseases, and one of the defenders of the pharaoh. In the beginning, she appeared more as Sekhmet, the fierce lioness warrior, while later transformed in this more gentle aspect.

Omar: Here she’s presented as a TV anchor, one of the many talking heads on Egyptian Television, playing on the saying that there’s a cat in every home (in ancient times of course), now replaced with a TV. Despite being a protective deity, her role is not naive: representing the media, she is entering people’s private space. In the upper right screen, one can see a baboon (her helpers, also sacred) with a remote controller and inscription Latlata meaning gossip. The bottom left has a few elements, the first being the ka, which stands for one’s spirit or essence after death.

By incorporating it with the image of the media, I’m playing with the idea that the media (or propaganda) is after our soul. The background of the print is made of old state newspapers in Arabic.

ISIS: buy, buy, buy (2013)

Srđan: She was the ideal woman and mother, patron of nature and magic. Isis is personifying the pharaoh’s throne, directly representing the pharaoh’s power. Her headdress is literally the hieroglyph of the throne. She is one of the first gods, coupled with Osiris as her husband, from whom the first stories originated. And here – let’s start with the details, what’s in the background?

Omar: The background of the print semi-transparently shows home delivery and hotline ads from daily newspapers. The goddess herself advertises a product with a twist: while a product could be almost anything, generic and abstract in its shape (detergent? chips? dog food?), framed with a masonic eye and inscription Khara meaning shit. The Eye of Providence (the all-seeing eye of God) has roots in Christianity rather than Egypt and is often associated with freemasonry. That’s why here I wanted to create a visual pun, alluding to conspiracy theories that are often found in adverts and mass communication. This rather negative view of marketing as propaganda is reinforced with my own disillusionment with the advertising world. Additionally, Isis is also the emblem of Banque Misr, Egypt’s first national bank with Egyptian financing, further reinforcing her contemporary symbol for consumerism and propaganda.

THOTH: knowledge is power (2013)

Srđan: The god of wisdom and knowledge, master of physical and divine law, it is said he himself calculated the making of heavens, stars, earth, and everything in them. A creative deity, he is recognized by the sacred ibis and baboon. Also related to magic and death – in the judgment of the dead, he was the one to record the results after measuring one’s sins.

Omar: In the new light, he is seen in an office, working as an analyst, related to the economy and the stock market. While time is money for Horus, knowledge is power for Thoth. Through data, he defines society as a white-collar level bureaucrat. Other potential reading could be surveillance. Whatever the case, he is an essential part of the system.

SESHAT: data harvesting (2019)

Srđan: Overlapping with Thoth, his consort, Seshat is in charge of wisdom, knowledge, and writing. She is the goddess scribe and record keeper, Mistress of the House of Books, in charge of libraries and archives (consequently treasury). She was recording the passage of time, mainly the pharaoh’s time on earth.

Omar: In our contemporary world, she switched to information gathering and data harvesting – the record keeper has moved online. The biggest social media companies are earning money based on collected data from their users, which is the reason why Euro bills are the background image. While everything gets digitized, not all data is important, which makes the record keeping pointless, emphasized by her making grimaces while taking selfies with her smartphone. Record-keeping is also inaccurate (our lives on social media are misrepresentations of our real lives) which is why on her bronze plaque, her name is misspelled. Just like in Ra’s case, her emblem – a stem with star-shaped petals and inverted horns – is not on her head, but on the item. The phone becomes the record keeper and an object of divination.

NEPHTHYS: the lady of the house/influencer (2019)

Srđan: I was trying to find more info on this one, but it’s rather scarce. This goddess was part of the top nine gods, known as the Great Ennead. Her function was the protection of the dead and “the lady of the house/temple”, signifying the pharaoh’s palace and priesthood. Her symbols are a house-shaped hieroglyph and a basket, also her headdress. Compared to some other gods from the pantheon, little is known about her and interpretations are fluid.

Omar: This gap definitely influenced my depiction. Nephthys is an influencer, creating a makeup tutorial. Like Bastet, she has access to other people’s private space and home through technology. Nephtys was heavily present in funerary rites, rituals mourning the dead and is a deity of protection, magic, and embalming.  However, like you mentioned her largest role was that of the “lady of the house”. She is not a housewife, but influences the household, by setting the standards and desired image. The household in this sense is intended to mean the temple, the sacred space. Think about a subtle message: the temple or pharaoh’s palace could be your home.

Her hair, unlike the other gods, is typically Egyptian, curly, and natural, her role hasn’t changed in modern times. In some rural parts of the country, certain mourners are still hired to cry and scream at someone’s funeral, a similar job that existed back in ancient times by the priestesses of Nephthys. The background stripes are metaphorical mummification bands, relating it to her funerary aspect, which could be also linked to the makeup (understood as preservation of course).

HORUS: time is money (2013)

Srđan: One of the oldest worshipped gods from ancient Egypt, he is the god of the sky, war, and hunting. Usually depicted as a falcon or falcon-headed man, he is truly a symbol of majesty and power and served as a role model to the pharaohs. In your interpretation, he looks like a cool businessman, dressed in a smart casual way, looking at his watch, with a solar disk (a precursor of the Christian halo if I may note) above his head. Tell me more about his new image.

Omar: This is actually the first of this series to be produced. Horus is business and time related: time is money, money is business, business is power. He is a desired model of the all-powerful, an image of the entrepreneur. His image is still widely in use in Egypt (for example, EgyptAir’s logo and many businesses around the country). As such, I see him both as a protective deity and a sign of competition, through his ancient hunting role.

ANUBIS: shopping for eternity (2013)

Srđan: Anubis is of the most recognizable Egyptian deities, represented as a black jackal. The black color was associated both with the rotting flesh and the black earth of the Nile valley. He is the god of mummification and underworld, who weighs one’s heart before deciding if one’s spirit (ka) be destroyed or live eternally.

Omar: I depicted him as an elderly-looking shopper, he is an image of materialism, consumerism, and consequently capitalism.

Srđan: My initial interpretation focused on the cart, where most of the conserved products and their packaging could outlive our physical bodies, being fully or semi-artificial. But…

Omar: I’d suggest that the supermarket is related to another transitory and non-place, the tomb and the underworld. Through the process of mummification, people’s organs were preserved, and the burial included material possessions, sometimes even favorite pets and servants, ready to follow their master to the afterlife. I’ve alluded to this with the background, with its thick grainy brushstrokes simulating the earth. This stacking could also relate to the saying that you can’t take it all with you to where you’re going after death…

SHU: busybody (2019)

Srđan: A primordial god, Shu stands for air and wind, but is also “considered to be a cooling, and thus calming, influence, and pacifier”, often metaphorically seen as separating the sky and earth. The ostrich’s feather in him is seen as a symbol of lightness and emptiness.

Omar: In The New Gods, he’s smoking shisha, while in the background are warning messages from tobacco packaging. While his air symbolism is traditionally seen in a rather positive light, the pacifying role has been reverted to a vice. His pose is frequent in the Arab world: as a human CCTV, he’s monitoring others and creating a form of social pressure. After all, Shu has been separating the lover’s Nut, the goddess of the sky, and Geb, the god of the Earth. 

A busybody who knows everything, imposing standards of behavior, looks, and norms. Interestingly, “Egypt is one of 15 countries worldwide with a heavy burden of tobacco-related ill health”, according to a 2015 report by the World Health Organization.

Another, more cultural and social take on Shu could be that of emptiness: the image of men smoking shisha in cafes is commonly associated with unemployment. The more time men spend doing this, idling as they watch and harass or judge neighborhood passersby, the more it’s apparent that they clearly don’t have work to get to.

MAAT: in vino veritas (2013)

Srđan: Justice, (the rule of) law, truth, balance, and morality, are closely associated with Maat. Her symbol is the ostrich’s feather and she was responsible for cosmic harmony. She, as a principle, was seen as a way to establish social order among the variety of conflicting groups and people living in ancient Egypt. In the Duat (the Egyptian underworld), she was one of the gods a person encountered in the afterlife when the hearts of the dead were weighed against her single feather.

Omar: My version shows Maat as happily drunk, with messy hair, clothes, and the ostrich’s feather. It’s as if you caught her at the end of a party. This viewpoint might seem desacralized, depicting the justice goddess’ fall from her duties. However, justice is elusive and can be manifested through excess (the bottle says in vino veritas in Latin, in wine lies the truth). She is also intended to be celebratory as Hathor.

PTAH: the crafter (2019)

Srđan: Another creator god, a pra deity, who, according to legend, existed before all other things and who conceived the world by thought and word. He is closely related to physical creation and is, therefore, the protector of all manual craftsmanship, as well as agriculture and the land. What’s his story now?

Omar: In this image, his agricultural aspect is emphasized, reminiscent of farmers who make up the majority of the population, but are neglected and unappreciated. He has the traditional green skin color, while his staff with symbols (ankh-djed-was) is transformed into a plowing tool. Farmers tend to be (and seen as) uneducated and poor, but a critical part of the society – after all, the whole ancient society came to be thanks to the fertile ground around the Nile. Even today, Egypt, despite being mostly a desert, is actually an agricultural country. Populist leaders (in Egypt, from Nasser to Sisi) often needed to get the farmers’ support to gain traction, and so they would do something for “the people”. The background is inspired by kilim tapestry patterns from rural areas.

HATHOR: dance, dance, dance (2013)

Srđan: The goddess of joy, feminine love, sexuality, music, and motherhood, she was also one of the companions of the deceased’s soul to the afterlife. She is usually depicted as a cow, or with a headdress with cow horns and the sun disk. I think this piece really needs the local context to be properly understood.

Omar: This is my favorite piece of the series. In my interpretation, she is a belly dancer, celebrating the body, femininity, entertainment, music, and love. She has the life symbol (ankh) and is one of the rare gods with a positive image in the series. I consider belly dancing – which originated in Egypt – is not given its rightful importance as part of contemporary dance. On one side, it’s recognized as part of Egypt’s popular culture (though ignored just like the pyramids and pharaohs), but on the other is also targeted by the conservative community due to body exposure, sexualized movements, and considered immoral. There is even an Act No. 430 of the law on censorship introduced in 2018, which states that “the dancing suit should cover the lower body, with no side slits, and should cover the breast and stomach area”, which Hathor happily refuses to comply with. The reading really depends on and reveals the onlookers’ ethics. If they are more on the liberal spectrum, they see the joyous tone of the piece, if they are more on the conservative side, they view her more within the same category as sex workers and consider it a cynical piece. Either way, it is one of the pieces I get asked most about, The role model for this image is the famous Egyptian actress and belly dancer Samia Gamal.

SETH: it’s either me or chaos! (2013)

Srđan: A complex and mysterious deity, Seth according to the myth of Osiris was responsible for killing Osiris and battling with Horus, and was seen as a god of chaos and disorder. He is depicted as what Egyptologists call Sha or Set animal, which appears to be a hybrid of “aardvark, a donkey, a jackal, or a fennec fox”. It’s not known if it was a real, misattributed, or extinct animal or even a fictional image. He was also the god of the desert, storms, and foreigners.

Omar: In The New Gods, Seth is a rebel, protesting and throwing a Molotov cocktail, wearing the Palestinian scarf (keffiyeh), which aside from being a symbol of Palestinian resistance, was used by protesters in Tahrir to protect themselves from teargas grenades. As such, he also represents the young people of the Egyptian Revolution. Here, just like with Hathor, the image is a test of personal beliefs, in this case, the political one. In one of his final public televised speeches in January 2011, president Hosni Mubarak famously said the revolution is a choice between chaos and stability, which was a constant justification for staying in power. Interestingly, during the Arab Spring, all the protesters at Tahrir square were accused of being foreigners, or foreign mercenaries, by the government, an accusation typical of oppressive and anti-democratic regimes. So depending on one’s interpretation of the events of the Arab Spring, this piece can be seen as either accurate or ironic.

Although traditionally portrayed as evil and adding to conflicting interpretations as an Arab Spring protester, I claim Seth is as important as his antipode, Horus. He is not bad or evil, rather creating a disbalance, a sign of social changes and otherness, the underdog. 

Omar Houssien (b. 1990) is an Egyptian-Australian artist with a background in design, illustration, and visual communication. Having completed his studies at the European Institute of Design in Milan, Italy, he returned to Cairo where he contributed work to art spaces and cultural initiatives, development programs, and various advertising campaigns.

In 2017, he participated in his first artist residency as part of the East Type West Type program at AGA Lab, culminating in a two-week exhibition at the Bijzondere Collecties (Amsterdam). From 2014 to 2018, he worked on the independent film Poisonous Roses (Cairo), which premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival and won several awards, eventually becoming Egypt’s 92nd Academy Awards submission for Foreign Film. In 2019, his work The New Gods was exhibited in Roznama 7, organized by Medrar for Contemporary Art (Cairo). He has had previous exhibitions in Cairo, Amsterdam, Milan and Belgrade. Instagram @oh.youfoundme

Srđan Tunić (b. 1984) is a freelance curator and researcher based in Belgrade, Serbia. He is a co-founder of Trans-Cultural Dialogues (as part of Cultural Innovators Network), Kustosiranje / About and Around Curating and Street Art Walks Belgrade initiatives. He is collaborating with art professionals, researching fields such as contemporary art, curatorial practices, street art and graffiti, science fiction, art appropriation, cultural diversity, experiential learning, independent cultural scene and self-management.

His texts have been published in the Kultura Journal, AFRIKA – Studies in art and culture, Transcultural Studies Journal, IJOCA – International Journal of Comic Art, SAUC – Street Art & Urban Creativity Scientific Journal, as well as web portals SEEcult, Uneven Earth, Balkanist, Makanje and Seismopolite magazine. www.srdjantunic.wordpress.com

Dialogues is a place for being vocal. Here, authors and artists get together in conversations, interviews, essays and experimental forms of writing. We aim to create a space of exchange, where the published results are often the most visible manifestations of relations, friendships and collaborations built around Sumac Space. SUBSCRIBE NOW TO STAY CURRENT.

The post The New Gods—Omar Houssien in Conversation with Srđan Tunić appeared first on Sumac Space.

[Scroll down for the Italian Version]

In the Greek language, dialogue comes from διά-through and λογος-speech, it is a conversation, a movement through an open space between distant dimensions of feeling, thinking, acting, where everything could happen. We developed another space and dynamic seeking our own format: a trialogue, a meeting of us three, who were in a continuous conversation without a specific goal known beforehand. Holding space and time together in regular online convenings, we tested how we can take and give space to each other in exchange free from assigned roles, expectations and structures. 

Through the following map, we, Anahita Razmi (artist), Jaroslava Tomanová (curator/researcher) and Fabrizio Ajello (writer/artist) set up a confrontation, triangulating our research and processes of thought and artistic experiences about stereotypes, deconstruction, decolonisation, translation and the figure of a Trickster, completed by a series of stringent questions on the topics addressed. Including links to resources such as articles and books, the presented map can be seen as a curated library visualising the relations between topics we discussed. We hope it will be a starting point for further growth, an ever-changing creature of thought which can hopefully take the form of a tetralogue, pentalogue, and so on.

Link to the Map

The following questions can be understood as flexible nodes prompting a discussion when needed. They do not determine any structure or form; they can be left alone and invited back when we forage for thoughts and intuitions together. 

• What relations do we see between practices of deconstruction and decolonisation today? What possibilities does the notion of deconstruction hold regarding present-day cultural stereotypes? 

• How do sites of power (institutional, economic, academic…) operate and choose today?

• What are figures that can propose alternatives and subvert systems of representation and power?

• The Meme? The Trickster? The Fool? The Fake Account?

• Trickster as an alter-ego: how can she confuse, destabilise, shake the ground of white privilege and Western modern, patriarchal gaze?

• How can appropriation be deployed to dismantle cultural stereotypes and ideological constructs?

• What relationships exist between tradition, translation and originality in contemporary art and aesthetic languages?

• Can irony form a kind of ‘critical intimacy’? (see Spivak on map)

• Is cynicism/nihilism the opposite of ‘critical intimacy’?

• What is a misunderstanding? 

• What does “lost in translation” mean? How can accidental slippages of one’s unconscious bias reveal an ideological grip?

• What happens when grammar, the system of rules of one language, is applied in another language? 

• Can it tell a story of past trauma? Can it give a testimony of a colonised mind?

Link to the Map

Fabrizio Ajello graduated from the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy in Palermo with a thesis on Contemporary Art History.
In the past, he has actively collaborated with the magazines Music Line and Succoacido.net. Since 2005 he has been working on the public art project, Progetto Isole. In 2008, together with the artist Christian Costa, he founded the public art project Spazi Docili, based in Florence, which in recent years has produced explorations of the territory, interventions, workshops and lectures in public and private institutions, exhibitions and artistic residencies.
He has also exhibited in Italian and international galleries and museums and participated in various events such as: Berlin Biennale 7, Break 2.4 Festival in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Synthetic Zero at BronxArtSpace in New York, Moving Sculpture In The Public Realm in Cardiff, Hosted in Athens in Athens, The Entropy of Art in Wroclaw, Poland. He teaches Literature at the Liceo Artistico di Porta Romana in Florence.

Anahita Razmi studied Media Art and Sculpture at the Bauhaus-University Weimar and the Pratt Institute New York before studying Fine Arts at the State Academy of Art and Design Stuttgart under Rainer Ganahl and Christian Jankowski.
Working with installation, moving image and performance, her practice is exploring contextual and geographical shifts – with a focus on shifts between an ‘East’ and a ‘West’. Using her own Iranian-German heritage as a reference, Razmi’s works are testing grounds for possibilities of import/export, hybrid identities and in the constructions and ambiguities of cultural representation.

Jaroslava Tomanová is a researcher and a writer currently based in Kassel, Germany. Alongside ongoing voluntary and informal art-related activities, her professional background is a combination of working in the visual arts, contemporary dance and performance, academic research and writing. In the past she worked as Curatorial Assistant at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) and as International Collaborations Coordinator at Tanec Praha. Her commitment to art and politics of solidarity, equality and justice drives her motivation to develop curatorial research, writing and practice alongside an overarching long-term research interest in the connection between language and power. Her university education has primarily focused on the relation between the arts and the state, and her PhD research at the University of Leeds is a critical study of neoliberal cultural policy discourse. As a writer and art critic she has contributed with reviews and essays to Corridor8, This Is Tomorrow and Freedom News.

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Frames Cracked by Lines of Doubt–Un Trilogo

Anahita Razmi / Jaroslava Tomanová / Fabrizio Ajello

Nella lingua greca, dialogo viene da διά-attraverso e λογος-parola/pensiero, è una conversazione, un movimento attraverso uno spazio aperto tra differenti dimensioni di sentire, pensare, agire, dove tutto può accadere. Cercando un format adeguato, abbiamo sviluppato un’altra tipologia di spazio e un’altra dinamica di confronto: un trialogo, un incontro a tre,  una conversazione continua senza un obiettivo specifico predeterminato. Dialogando e lavorando insieme attraverso spazio e tempo in regolari sessioni online, abbiamo testato come sia possibile condividere ed collaborare insieme in uno scambio libero da ruoli assegnati, aspettative e strutture. 

Attraverso la seguente mappa, noi, Anahita Razmi (artista), Jaroslava Tomanová (curatrice/ricercatrice) e Fabrizio Ajello (scrittore/artista) abbiamo impostato un confronto, triangolando le nostre ricerche e i processi di pensiero ed esperienze artistiche su temi quali: stereotipi, decostruzione, decolonizzazione, traduzione e la figura del Trickster, il tutto corredato da una serie di domande stringenti sui temi trattati. Includendo link a risorse come articoli e libri, la mappa presentata può essere vista come una biblioteca che mostra in un unica visione le relazioni tra gli argomenti trattati. Questo progetto vuole essere così un punto di partenza per un’ulteriore crescita, una creatura di pensiero in continua evoluzione che presto prenderà la forma di un tetralogo, pentalogo, e così via.

Link alla Mappa

La mappa presentata serve come pietra angolare della nostra conversazione in evoluzione e continuerà a cambiare durante il processo collaborativo. Se vuoi unirti ai nostri incontri liberi, irregolari, informali e non moderati che ruotano liberamente intorno alle domande proposte, invia una richiesta di modifica della mappa o mettiti in contatto via email: editorial [at] sumac [dot] space.

Le seguenti domande possono essere intese come nodi flessibili, tese a stimolare una discussione e un confronto in fieri. Non determinano o precludono alcuna struttura o forma; possono essere affrontate singolarmente, o utilizzate come punto di partenza per focalizzare e processare insieme pensieri e intuizioni.

• Quali relazioni vediamo oggi tra le pratiche di decostruzione e decolonizzazione? Quali possibilità ha la nozione di decostruzione rispetto agli stereotipi culturali attuali? 
  
  
• Come operano e scelgono oggi i luoghi del potere (istituzionale, economico, accademico…)?
  
  
• Quali sono le figure che possono proporre alternative e sovvertire i sistemi di rappresentazione e di potere?
  
  
• Il Meme? Il Trickster? Il Matto? Il Fake Account?
  
  
• Trickster come alter-ego: questa “figura” è in grado di confondere, destabilizzare, scuotere il terreno del privilegio bianco e dello sguardo occidentale moderno e patriarcale?
  
  
• Come può l’appropriazione essere impiegata per smantellare stereotipi culturali e costrutti ideologici?
  
  
• Quali relazioni esistono tra tradizione, traduzione e originalità nell’arte contemporanea e nei linguaggi estetici?
  
  
• L’ironia può formare una sorta di “intimità critica”? (vedi Spivak sulla mappa)
  
• Il cinismo/nichilismo è l’opposto dell'”intimità critica”?
  
  
• Cos’è un malinteso? 
  
  
• Cosa significa “lost in translation”? Come possono gli slittamenti accidentali del proprio pregiudizio inconscio rivelare una forzatura ideologica?
  
  
• Cosa succede quando la grammatica, il sistema di regole di una lingua, viene applicata in un’altra lingua? 
  
  
• Questo fenomeno può raccontare la storia di un trauma passato? Può dare una testimonianza di una mente colonizzata?
  

Link alla Mappa

The post Frames Cracked by Lines of Doubt—A Trialogue appeared first on Sumac Space.

Some of the information presented in this text might be fictional. Thus, the author is leaving complete freedom for the reader to decide upon what might be factual or fictional.

The presented self-interview of Huda Takriti interrogates her multi-media installation of cities and private living rooms (2020) and reveals central interests of her work: the agency of lost archives and hidden biographies. In of cities and private living rooms a domestic mystery unfolds into a visual essay where images, family archives, various landscapes combined with text and memory intertwine with fiction, reality, the (hi)stories of migration and diaspora, identity and representation.

Q: Could you take us chronologically through the background of your work? When and how did you find out about your great-grandmother’s “secret” identity?

A: It all happened by the end of 2011, during a conversation with my older brother. He mentioned that he was wondering if there is a possibility to get a Polish passport if he can prove the origin of Fatima. Nevertheless, he was not sure if my mom or her family would want to speak about this openly!

That’s when I found out that my great-grandmother whom I had never met in person, but still have heard so much about, was in fact not completely the person I thought I knew. Fatima was not Lebanese. At least, not for her entire life. 

You can imagine how shocking it would have been for me to hear that piece of information. I thought that I already had a complex background; A Lebanese/Palestinian mother and a Syrian/Iranian father. Suddenly something else was added to the already complex batter.

My brother did not have much information. According to him, Fatima was Polish who managed to come to Syria with her family before or during WWII. She later moved to Lebanon. His source was one of our relatives who managed to track down a couple of Fatima’s relatives on Facebook. She even ended up meeting one of them; The grand-daughter of Fatima’s sister “Jamile” who now lives in the USA. My mom asked him not to share this with anyone when he tried to get more information from her. But it was too late for him to back off!

Q: And what happened next? 

A: Well, the first step I took was to go to my mom and ask her if this was true and for what reason was this kept a secret… At first, she refused to talk about it and constantly repeated, “There’s no need to talk about this” and “It’s already buried in the past, there’s no point in digging it up now”. However, after insisting for a while she shared her version of the story with me; Fatima was born in Damascus in 1887 to Polish parents whom have immigrated to Ottoman Syria¹. Her birth name was Victoria. Later in her life, Victoria traveled to Lebanon where she got married to a Lebanese Journalist and founder of Al-Ababeel newspaper, my great-grandfather “Hussain Al-Habbal²”, who gave her the name Fatima. She lived her life between Saida, a city in the south of Lebanon, Damascus and Kuwait. She died in Saida in 1967.

Q: So, your mother and your brother’s stories were somewhat incoherent?

A: To some extent, yes! Some of the details shared commonalities. I must mention both my mother and my brother were very sure of their versions. My mother was raised in Saida by her grandmother “Fatima” as her parents were working in Kuwait and wanted her to grow up in Lebanon. She says that Fatima was her best friend till the day she died. So, I consider her to be a reliable source of information. On the other hand, my brother’s source of information was proven by Fatima’s extended family member in the USA.

The more family members I’ve asked, the more versions of stories I encountered. Such discrepancies between the narratives became the starting point for this work. When Victoria’s/Fatima’s birth certificate showed up, it became even more confusing. The stories, at first, had a common thread, Poland. Moreover, after I finished the work last summer there was a new story mentioning Russia as the place of origin of Fatima’s parents.

Before the new story come to surface, there was a debate on which city or village did she come from. Some said Warsaw and others said Gdansk, and a debate considering the historical period of their departure. With an aim to find a trace of some kind of a historical record or a document which may lead me somewhere further, I left to Poland.

Q: But you have mentioned finding Victoria’s birth certificate. Didn’t it lead you somewhere in your research? 

A: The birth certificate was issued under the name Fatima Al-Shami, and it was later revealed that my great grandfather, Hussain, had this document made for her after their marriage. She kept this name when she chose to convert to Islam later in her life.

Q: It seems like you’ve got a lot of fiction going on in your family’s history. How do you reflect on what is factual and what is fictional in your work? Is it important for you that the viewers are able to distinguish between the two?

A: The work consists of two parts, a film installation and a family photo archive. Hints were implemented for the viewers here and there. In the film, I don’t only reflect on what is there I try to reflect on what is not there as well. By borrowing items from the photo archive and implementing them into the film.

The archive is shown via slide projection, the photos are real, what the viewers see is real. Nevertheless, the material and the form of the photos are manipulated. I don’t know if the original photos still exist somewhere but one relative had a digital copy of the photos uploaded to Facebook. 

The photos I am using were downloaded from Facebook and then returned to their analog state. In this process, some information and details of the photos were hidden away. The viewers can still see pixels and parts of the torn photo edges in the slide projection. Moreover, I leave it to them to decide what could be real and what not.

Q: The act of restoring or returning the photos to a unity that might not exist anymore suggests a form of fictional archive. Does it exemplify your tendency to collaborate with and rework historical material?

A: Honestly, I didn’t have a good sense of what exemplifies my work while working on this project. I’ve always been drawn to fictions that have documentary tendencies, and documents that open fictional pathways. It’s more clear for me now that I love to be on the edge between the factual and the fictional.

Q: In your video installation, the first question the viewers are confronted with is “Do we need the truth?”. One can say that the phrasing of the question is a key to the work. To whom are you addressing the question? Are you including yourself with the viewers?

A: There’s a big difference between saying “Do we need the truth?” and “Do we want the truth?”. Personally, phrasing the question this way was a reflection on the stage of my research where I realised that there is no point of seeking the truth anymore; Funny that these were my mom’s first words to me and it took me about eight years to realise that. Moreover, it was a hint left to the viewer about the process and how seeking the truth, this one truth in regard to others, appears to get lost further and further.

Q: This question comes after we hear your moms’ voice reciting what seems to be a memory of her grandmother at first which turns out to be a dream. Can you elaborate on the sequence of the narrative in the work and on the way the archive and the video installation engage in conversation with one another?

In the work, both the photo archive and the film installation are connected to each other. as you mentioned, the film begins with my moms’ voice reciting a dream she had the night Fatima died in 1967 during a phone call we had. At the time I was in Poland. She always finds a way of talking about a dream she had had when she is questioned about any topic. And that found its way to the visual narrative of the work which is constantly blurring the lines between dream and reality.

The narrative throughout the film is set to unite it with the photo archive. It starts by listing items and objects we can see in the photo archive, as if the narrator is looking straight at it. The narrative continues with comparisons and reflections on the images and places we see in the video. Geographies and archive images melt together into a visual essay. 

Q: You shot the video in Poland. Can you speak about the connection between the locations you filmed in and the story you are narrating? 

A: I went to Poland with an aim to find a lead to some kind of truth. Instead, I was surrounded by a landscape that carries a certain history. A history which most of my family members relate themselves to without being 100% sure of. I began to think about spaces and memory, how we relate ourselves to an unknown space.

I don’t know if you are familiar with Masao Adachi’s³ so-called Landscape Theory or Fukeiron, a strategy that Adachi implemented in his 1969 film AKA Serial Killer, which suggests the possibility of creating a portrait of someone through capturing the physical landscape that shaped them.

I was not interested in dogmatic adaptation of Adachi’s theory. My interest here lies in reversing it and searching for possibilities of positioning a person to a certain site or historical context. Time in Poland had me thinking of possibilities of creating someone’s portrait made up of patchy memories and unproven facts.

The landscape we see surrounded me during my time there, the narrative we hear is constantly referring to this landscape as one from a memory or a connection from the past. I never reveal the mystery of the work or the place it was filmed in till the last scene of a marathon in Warsaw; Warsaw becomes somewhere in-between a question and an answer – an imaginary ending point of sorts.

¹ Ottoman Syria refers to divisions of the Ottoman Empire within the Levant, usually defined as the region east of the Mediterranean Sea, west of the Euphrates River, north of the Arabian Desert and south of the Taurus Mountains. The Middle East and North Africa: 2004, Routledge, p1015.
² Hussain Al-habbal was born in Beirut in 1869, founded Ababeel newspaper in 1895, which was a political one. He criticized the alliance that had been established between France and Britain to divide the Middle East, so the French High Commissioner General Maxime Weygand sentenced him to prison in 1919. I. Kreidieh, Sons of the East p 496 – 497.
³ Masao Adachi (足立正生 Adachi Masao, born May 13, 1939) is a Japanese screenwriter and director who was most active in the 1960s and 1970s. He is best known for his writing collaborations with directors Kōji Wakamatsu and Nagisa Oshima

Huda Takriti (Damascus, 1990, lives and works in Vienna, Austria) is a transdisciplinary artist based in Vienna. In her artistic practice, she explores the relationship in between history, politics, memories and counter memories and the construction of our own subjectivities. She uses different media to work with these issues, such as video, film, installation, painting, and performative situations. In most of her works, she tempts to generate questions about how we relate to others, how we tell personal stories in the frame of the collective history and how do we deal with our patrimony and traditions.

Takriti has participated in many international group exhibitions and festivals, including exhibitions at Universitätsgalerie im Heiligenkreuzerhof (Austria), Kunsthalle Wien (Austria), Afro Asiatisches Institut (Austria), [.Box] Video Art Project Space (Italy), STIFF Student International Film Festival (Croatia), Stiftung Mercator (Germany), Kunstraum Lakeside (Austria), Centre d’art Sa Quartera (Spain), Addaya Centre for Contemporary Arts (Spain), Krinzinger Lesehaus (Austria) and University of Applied Arts _ Die Angewandte (Austria). Huda received Kunsthalle Prize 2020 (Austia), Ettijahat Production Award, Laboratory of Arts, 7th Edition 2020 (Lebanon), Styria-Artist-in-Residence fellowship 2016 (Austria) and BMUKK and Kulturkontakt Austria residency fellowship 2014 (Austria).

Dialogues is a place for being vocal. Here, authors and artists get together in conversations, interviews, essays and experimental forms of writing. We aim to create a space of exchange, where the published results are often the most visible manifestations of relations, friendships and collaborations built around Sumac Space. SUBSCRIBE NOW TO STAY CURRENT.

The post Of Cities and Private Living Rooms—Huda Takriti in Conversation with Huda Takriti appeared first on Sumac Space.

Farzaneh Abdoli: I would like to start by sharing my own experience as an artist and see if anything resonates with the way you see your practice. 
One of the most fascinating phenomena that I have experienced during my artistic activity is that I am continually identifying myself throughout my work, and I am continually questioning myself in relation to the purity and accuracy of my choices. I have studied Freud’s psychological defenses a bit and I have recognized that my work portrays this; my artistic activity becomes a foundation to improve this kind of cognition. Psychological defenses are those individual reactions that we show automatically and unknowingly to escape and avoid difficulty and stress. A person cannot consciously perceive them because they frequently occur in us before learning the language. The human mind reacts subconsciously before experiencing emotional pain in situations where it may be stimulated.

Accordingly, I believe self-reflection is a highly complicated and difficult task. I was constantly identifying phenomena in myself that I was incapable of seeing in my previous project, Melancholia, and I decided to recognize what was really happening inside me and to tolerate difficult experiences so that I could manage them. As I deeply considered and analyzed the issues, feelings, and forces were gradually formed within me that led me to my choices to create the artwork. I created the work in a highly exploratory style and as part of a long process, and I was not entirely aware of the details of what was continually forming. This process is similar to solving a puzzle; it is both stressful and joyful simultaneously. The most pleasant part of being an artist, besides the feeling of freedom, is the opportunity to meet reality and fantasy without fear, and to examine them. Undoubtedly, I experienced many pleasant and unpleasant feelings throughout this process, and it creates my life experiences. 
How does this process take place in your artistic practice? Where do you start your artistic activities? 

Ahoo Maher: My process is a bit different. I started the Diary project eight years ago because I wanted to document my everyday life. I’m not a good writer, therefore I started to record my days by drawing in my own style. I continued this routine for a few years, creating one drawing every day that was inspired by various daily events and news. The drawings then became more and more personal and turned into self-portraits. Unquestionably, one can see the effect of social media on them. I attempted to express my feelings and emotions in these self-portraits, which then shaped the project Faces – an interactive project in which several self-portraits were displayed in the form of slide puzzles whose position could be changed by the audience.

Another project, Hejleh, originated from my own interest. I once traveled to the south of Iran, where I attended a wedding party. The bridal chamber attracted my attention. This initial interest resulted in several years of research, that later led me to observed the chamber of mourning. The shapes, colors, and spaces intrigued me and transformed into an installation project that grew during the time of research. 

Moreover, I have always carried out other projects in parallel; I have worked in the field of performance and curated projects, and as a result, they affected and complemented each other. The subject of most of my work comes out of my daily struggles, and I really can’t tell when exactly the project starts and finishes, because it goes on for as long as needed. It might take me a while to get through a project, which can be a platform for new ideas while it is still in the works, and so several other sets that are ultimately related to each other pop up.

Farzaneh: I want to talk about your recent project, After Party. How do you decide what an artwork needs to say to the viewer? That is, what do you intend to achieve with After Party? I am asking this because I am constantly challenged by the balance between self-expression and communication with the audience. I think, “What will happen when I explain and show my inner feelings to others!?” Sometimes it is even hard for me to think about this issue because it is constantly possible that you are not understood and there is no connection between you and your audience.

Ahoo: I think art does not always need to have a function or purpose. Of course, it can be significant and convey meaning, but I assume that art is often produced out of necessity. I do not intend to criticize or confirm anything; I am just showing people’s lives from another angle so that other people may look at them similarly and agree with me or find recognizable elements in them. I do not intend to present news; rather, I want to think, to look around with no judgments, and invite others to join me. I want to look at my surroundings from the outside and notice the concerns of my generation and their effect on me.

Farzaneh: In any case, you examine and analyze a subject and create an image, you bring that moment of reflection to your work, and eventually, you describe and write a story that you have created in your mind. Do you think it can be summarized by saying that you desire to create a moment of reflection?

Ahoo: In regards to After Party, I would say that my starting point was the emptiness and meaningless feeling people sometimes experience when they go back to their lives after a party. In my view, this is not necessarily positive or negative. I desire to have a neutral perspective, neither approving nor rejecting it. I can say my standpoint is a moment of reflection. 

Farzaneh: Do you intend to become more engaged with the issue as you work? Do you wish to convey a message that is driven by your personal perspective?

Ahoo: Absolutely. Since this subject is transmitted through my vision, it is personalized. Therefore, I set the details of the work in a specific order that can generate the feeling I wish to convey.

Farzaneh: I see a very clear and personal message in Banksy’s work, which conveys a social message using his way of observing and making the most beneficial use of his media. Would you agree that if the artist is informed by his/her surroundings, their perception will become stronger, and the artist can explain their messages more explicitly and clearly? I think that possibly, if this maturity increases, the artist can affect the audience more deeply, or maybe even ask deeper questions.

Ahoo: I assume people’s understanding of life changes as they get older. When it comes to artists, I believe this is also influenced by shifts in artistic periods because artistic work is not separate from the person – what happens to the artist also happens to their work. Of course, when a work of art reaches the point of presentation, the artist aims to convey a message and wants to share with the audience what they went through or learned. But I do not have a message about the dos and don’ts in the process of developing the work. For example, when I start a project, it is often after I have had questions and thoughts about the subject for years. I’m not just talking about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing; I am stating that we should simply look at it again because it’s ours. This is the life I am experiencing, I recognize this, and of course, it may not appear like a great social issue at first glance. I try to express myself in a simple and tangible language. There’s a wide variety of artistic practices, and art is not always critical. But as far as I have experienced, sometimes the issues that I introduce involve significant social concerns, even though I express them in terms of my perspective, experience, and cognition to make them tangible and to speak of them with honesty.

Farzaneh: As an Iranian artist who lives in Europe, how do you find your way and identity in the international field? 

Ahoo: Being a student in Europe was a wonderful opportunity because you are supported everywhere. As a young artist, when you hold or attend an exhibition or competition, you are always in the spotlight. But when this period is over, all this support is eliminated. Entering the art market becomes extremely difficult. Yet, there are opportunities to make a living and continue working as an artist by participating in art fairs, for instance, and performance and conceptual art are supported by public and private funds in order to create projects. There are also opportunities for the younger art spaces and projects, so that they can independently pursue their artistic activities somehow separately from the art market. 

As to my nationality, here in Austria, I do my best to follow my independent path as Ahoo, apart from my nationality as Iranian. It is definitely not easy as a 30-year-old female painter, though. I am inspired by Iran and my background, which is undoubtedly visible in my work. 

Farzaneh: Are there international artists that you value in particular?

Ahoo: There’s a difference between the international art world and the art market. When you enter the market, the value of your work increases exponentially according to the principles of the market, but when we look at the artist we still consider their background and artistic path. I think David Hockney is one of the most intelligent artists of our time. I saw his works two years ago at the Centre George Pompidou. He started first with drawing, and when Polaroid developed, he started to work with Polaroid photography while creating the well-known series of swimming pool paintings and his many other prominent works. Hockney is so intelligent that he is constantly in line with the changes and media of his time and has always progressed. Although he signed a contract with Apple to produce videos in partnership with them, he could never be identified simply by those videos. We know him due to the process he went through as an artist, and we give meaning to those videos. He follows the state of the art so well with a remarkably high social intelligence and adapts himself to societal changes. I think it is incredible.

Farzaneh: How much do you think the market affects the concept? What is the relationship between the two? What is this distinction in your mind?

Ahoo: I think it is entirely personal and they can be separated. We can have an idea of ​​which works are more “sellable”, and sometimes that influences the types of work artists create. Some topics are noteworthy, such as global warming, which is currently a significant issue, and it is the right time to present a project on this topic. If you come from the Middle East, there is an exotic gaze, which is preferred by Western society. This generates temptation to work on such issues even though it’s not your concern, because it might draw the attention of the market. But frequently there are both concerns and cyclical synchronicity. I cannot imagine changing my subject based on the market because my work is driven by my personal need and interest. In fact, it is by choice that I have not yet entered the larger art market. The path I have chosen to pursue with my art will not take me there very promptly.

Farzaneh: I feel that those who purchase works of art are often quite conservative with their selections; they often prefer to purchase reproduced or modern concepts, or works that guarantee their investment. Innovation is not as valued. This influences artists’ activity.

Ahoo: Naturally, the path is difficult because you are not supported in some situations. But on the other hand, the path is more sincere. Because when we perform a task creatively or innovatively, it may not be accepted at the time or place of its debuted presentation, but it does not mean that the work is bad. I do not wish to see results very soon. I know that I am happy with the work that I am doing, and I think that when artists go their own way, independently and sincerely, they often see results at some point. Of course, we have to live and pay for living expenses, but more than that, we should not care about the market and we should move forward with confidence and strength and continue on our path.

Ahoo Maher, born in 1990 in Tehran, lives and works in Vienna.
Maher studied Music at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. She furthermore graduated with a Master’s degree in contextual painting from the University of Fine Arts Vienna.
The main theme of her work is living conditions from the perspective of women, which she explores through different media such as paintings, installations and performances.

Ahoo Maher’s work was presented as part of the CHARBAGHS (Four Gardens) project from 10.03 – 30.09.2018 at philomena+ in Vienna, Austria.
https://philomena.plus/programme/hosna-pourhashemi-charbaghs-four-gardens/

Farzaneh Abdoli currently lives and works in Iran. She is a member of the Association of Iranian Sculptors and has participated in several exhibitions, including the 5th Tehran Biennial of Sculpture at the Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2008, she was part of the first Biennial of Urban Sculpture and one of her works was selected to be installed in the city. In 2009, her first public sculpture called Fish Wave was installed along the Sattãri Highway in Tehran. Abdoli is also one of the winners of the second Urban Biennale. In the same year, another work of hers was installed in the public space, at Kosar Square in Mashad. She furthermore created the rainwater fountain under the Seyyedkhandãn Bridge in Tehran. Farzaneh has participated in many group exhibitions of the Association of Iranian Sculptors.

Dialogues is a place for being vocal. Here, authors and artists get together in conversations, interviews, essays and experimental forms of writing. We aim to create a space of exchange, where the published results are often the most visible manifestations of relations, friendships and collaborations built around Sumac Space. SUBSCRIBE NOW TO STAY CURRENT.

The post Between Research, Perspectives, and Artworks—Ahoo Maher in Conversation with Farzaneh Abdoli appeared first on Sumac Space.