Process
Critical Reflection
Sometimes it feels like I’m in a spaceship traveling at lightspeed. I’m bored, and outside looks blurry. I don't really know why I keep circling the same planet but on special occasions I choose to land in Iran. Everytime I arrive there the people I left have aged significantly, yet I still feel 10 years old. There are new buildings everywhere. I feel like I only checked my telescope a day ago and it looked less cluttered. Sometimes my visits feel like a snapshot. They’re similar to a photograph… arranged for the frame and never the same again. I take these photographs with my mind and I leave but i’m only a GIF compared to the full feature film. Sometimes I miss the plot/screening and I only get to read about it in the critics review.
This is how it feels for me to be part of the Iranian Diaspora…
How do I capture these snapshots in their 4 dimensional form? How do I capture the essence of these memories?
Figure 1. Hiraeth
(Hafez, 2016)
My work is autobiographical. I am trying to find a visual language that best depicts the sequences that make up the memories I want to capture. It is the essence of this intangible space that is most interesting to me. I am looking at Nazgol Ansarinia and Mohammad Hafez as both their works are very close to what I am trying to represent, and the emotions I hold behind my work can be directly felt in the combination of theirs.
My focus is on the houses and spaces we occupied, most of which have now been destroyed and replaced. In Hafez's work, the Syrian-American artist creates architectural portraits of the city of Damascus. Capturing the texture and essence of the city he left behind. In his work titled ‘Hiraeth’ the scene depicts a street with a door leading somewhere. There is a peaceful nature which is oozing from his choices in colour; giving a sense of early morning quiet. You can almost hear the morning azan coming from the structures of the city towering above the quiet street below. In the Apollo 40 Under 40 Podcast, Hafez said he wants the viewer to see the materials he is representing as both heavy physically and emotionally - he wanted to express the turmoil and agony he was experiencing inside him, so he felt that his pieces need to jet out of the wall as if they were creatively yelling out (Schwarz and Hafez, 2020). The work really spoke to me, as I felt the desperation in trying to jam as much information as possible into a frame; like a horde of collective mementos to the memory of his motherland. This hoarding of mementos is something I have been doing in my work by collecting and reusing the paint I peel from my pallet with in these paintings of my memories.
Often as an artist there is a fear of overworking, but when I look at Hafez’s work I see harmony in the chaotic scene; and I realise that overworking and detail aren't the same thing. As he explains that the “jetting” out of the 3D elements in his work are a way of expressing his agony, I think back to my own work and how the 3D elements of the paint peels I use are a motif of the connection I feel to my memories. It is an act of preservation. I am trying not to lose anything that is related to these memories I am painting. I do not like to waste such perfect things that are by-products of my creations and also tools in my understanding of my past.
I know I’m not alone in this feeling of loss as artist Nazgol Ansarinia is also compelled by the constant destruction and reconstruction of Tehran. Ansarinia states “ I think that’s what makes this fast speed of construction so destructive in a way. It’s taking away our collective memory and individual memory with it. Neighbourhoods are changing so fast that they are unrecognisable. You feel lost when you can’t relate to a space.” (The Guardian / Tate, 2016) . While Hafez is quite literal in his depiction of Damascus, Nazgol Ansarinia responds more abstractly to her relationship with Tehran. Ansarina’s work is in direct conversation with the destruction that is happening. She is on ground zero. As for me and Hafez, it is a more detached comment that we are making; as we are viewing our spaces with an additional distance. “If you can't go home, make home”(Schwarz and Hafez, 2020). This statement made by Hafez is how I started approaching the subject matter I have been working on in Unit 1 - My Aunt Pari’s home. Similar to Hafez’s approach, I tried to capture what I saw when thinking back to that space, as accurately as I could from memory. Creating an artefact that I could look upon when feeling an extra sense of nostalgia. Perhaps I am so far from these memories, that they now feel like a fairytale and the Iran I’m faced with as an adult is different tonally than what it once was. The tightening of the sanctions, the new government, the failing currency; all fill me with uncertainty and dread… and paint a grey veil over the once golden hues of the hazy summers I used to enjoy.
“The Tehran of today, a city longing for the illusion of its past while restlessly bulldozing over itself to build a fantasy of its future.” (The Guardian / Tate, 2016)
Figure 2. An example of the paint peels I use in my artwork.
Figure 3. A photograph I took of the vacant lot I pass on my morning commute.
Figure 4. House
(Whiteread, 1993)
Sometimes on my commute into university I pass this vacant lot on the bus and I see the traces of a building imprinted on the side of a mid 20th century property. It triggers the thought of the houses that no longer exist in my life. There is absence through presence. It suggests there is something tangible left behind, reminding me of Rachel Whiteread's work ‘House’ (Whiteread, 1993), the ghostly structure that gives mass to the inhabited space of a home that is no longer present. This reminds me of a quote by Lefebvre:
“Nothing disappears completely ... In space, what came earlier continues to underpin what follows ... Pre-existing space underpins not only durable spatial arrangements, but also representational spaces and their attendant imagery and mythic narratives” (Nicholson-Smith and Lefebvre, 1991). In Ansarina’s installation “The Mechanisms of Growth '' she has given value and space to the rubble that is a byproduct of the construction boom that is happening in Tehran. The work is poetically demonstrating Lefebvre’s notion of nothing disappearing completely. She is validating the memory of the houses that are now turned to dust.
Figure 5. The Mechanisms of Growth, Demolishing Buildings, Buying Waste (Ansarinia, 2017)
It feels as though my memories are starting to crumble and I’m desperately grasping at the fragments as they fall into the void. I have been reading a book written by my cousin called “Iran: My Grandfather.'' The author, Ali Alizadeh, starts the book with the sentence “I have no home.” (Alizadeh, 2010). And he continues “I yearn for a home, a concrete space to house the abstractions of belonging and identity” (Alizadeh, 2010). Alizadeh relates the importance of a photograph of our grandfather to understanding his present state of “homelessness” as an immigrant living in Australia. I think it's interesting how Anne Peterson in her book ‘Migration into art’ talks about the duality of being a migrant. How you are newcomer in your receiving country and at the same time an immigrant from the perspectives of those who stayed behind in the home country.``(Petersen, 2017) This sentiment is shared among those of the community whom I have spoken to. This constant push and pull, neither here nor there. A foreigner wherever I go. Floating amidst the sea grounded only by the photographs of my past.
Figure 6. A Photograph of the Grandfather who Ali Alizadeh wrote "Iran: My Grandfather" about.
Opening the family photo album and reconnecting with the past moments inside of them is comforting but also gives me a sickly feeling. In camera Lucida writes: “What the photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially” (Barthes and Howard, 2000). What I gain from this quote is that a photograph can be an immutable anchor point for your mind to connect with the memory. Through my art I want to capture more than just the moment. I want my art to exude the emotion and longing I feel. To connect people to my memories in a way a photograph cannot capture. To quantify the nostalgia and hazy emotions. I want to merge the space that was with who I am now. Connecting past and present.
Kudzanai-Violet Hwami is an artist who uses photography as a tool in her work. She often paints these nostalgic scenes collaged with colour and motifs that suggest certain identities that represent her subjects and emotions. In this work titled “Family Portrait” Hwami has painted a family sitting on a sofa. One face has been crossed out, perhaps expressing resentment or hurt. It hints at a deeper story that is unknown to the viewer but, nonetheless, you feel the deep emotion and in turn it can be related to your own experiences. A bright collage of colours dominate the painting. Cool blues intersected with warm reds. You can feel a separation between the man and woman illustrated by the clear line.
Figure 7. Family Portrait
(Hwami, 2017)
Figure 8. Family @ Ame Pari's
Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 28 cm (2021)
In ‘Family @ Ame Pari’s’ the colours I have chosen are similar to the mood and feeling that space gives me when I think back to it. The choice to leave the detail and expressions blank in the figures was to better convey the moment and how it links to my memory. I could not see the faces of my family, only Ame Pari’s living room and the flash of the camera. I painted the light reflecting off the plastic wallet that houses the photo from my family album to connect past and present. The acrylic paint peels that jut out from the canvas represent the fragments of other memories. I feel sentimental about these scraps of colour I have collected as I delve deeper into my past. In Hwami’s work, I feel that she has brought the present into her paintings, and it’s helping me to understand how to connect my own paintings to who I am now.
Figure 9. Murals stretched over 12 kilometers on the east and west sides of Sayyad Expressway.(Ansarinia, 2018)
Nazgol Ansarinia’s work “proposal for a bridge: Landscape” focuses on the murals that have been painted to cover the scars of the neighbourhoods torn apart by the Sayyad Shirazi expressway. Ansarinia turns the topography painted in these idealist scenes into a bridge, a means for reconnection between the neighbourhoods that were torn apart. Her attention to this event made me feel really close to her, as Ame Pari’s apartment block is one of those buildings that has a mural painted on it to cover the scars left by the demolishing of my dad's childhood home which was next to it. The expressway narrowly missed my aunt's house in its course of destruction, as you can see in this figure. But I saw how it transformed the whole neighbourhood in its 8 years of construction during my yearly visits to Iran. I think it's interesting how ghosts of the past can exist on platforms like google maps. Often it is not completely up to date and you can find a building that no longer exists still standing from the satellite image… Isn't it funny how the same is applied to the stars that we see from Earth, as we are receiving the light information at a delay from the truth. The light captured by the satellite image can be likened to the light emitted from a distant and probably dead star.
Figure 10. Annotated screenshot from Google Maps, showing the relation of Ame Pari's house to the Sayyad Expressway.
How does this link back to the work that I’m creating? My present state of self is looking back on a mental image or light that is coming from the past. It is a bit distorted by the decades of time that have passed yet it still exists for me even though the moment is long gone. In a way these memories are like stars in the universe that exist within my head (all our heads). Here on earth, aka me, I can still see these memories but they are long dead. All I see is an echo, a faint call for attention. “Look at me, I once existed.”
In my work I will look at the fragments of these stars and show how they are suspended in space, but also how they are connected to a wider network. The void/space in between should not be feared, but seen as a home for these pieces of me. As we are all part of stardust and all connected to the universe and the space inbetween is a part of our home.
Something that has grounded me in this journey of recollecting, and collecting, is the game The Neverhood. I remember huddling around my cousin's yellowing box computer, fighting for a glance at the screen, as the pirated copy of the claymation game began to load. The character in the game wakes up in a strange room with no recollection of who he is. The whole world of the Neverhood is “suspended above an endless void” (The Neverhood, 2009). The game consists of us trying to figure out his identity, with the aid of randomly scattered tapes that tell fragments of a larger story. This action reminds me of my own journey in trying to find my identity through fragments of my memories from Iran.
Figure 11. The Neverhood “suspended above an endless void” (The Neverhood, 2009)
(The Neverhood, 1996, n.d.)
During my time at university I have been collaborating with an MA sculpture student named Lauren. I gave her sketches and paintings of the spaces I am working on and she has created her own 3 dimensional model of them by casting the architectural elements and arranging and rearranging them intuitively. Her sculpture reminds me of ruins, a building that has been destroyed. How do you inhabit a building that has been destroyed? I painted this image of the sculpture from life and exaggerated certain motifs as I went on. "Playing with Yasaman" shows fragments of a building propped up with sticks to create a structure resembling a platform game for the viewer to travel through. I have used the paint peels here to tell the narrative of my cousin Yasaman and I playing in the different spots in Ame Pari’s apartment building. The placement of these paint fragments are the suvonears left from previous art works. They are like the ghosts inhabiting this enthral headspace.
Figure 12. A photograph of Lauren's sculpture, taken by Lauren. Plaster, 2021
Figure 13. Playing with Yasaman
Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 70 cm (2021)
After reflecting on Hafez and Anserina’s work, I can see how some elements of their practises have informed my own. Something that I worry about is finding my own voice amongst these thought provoking artists. In my work I am recognising the fragmentation of memory and depicting it in the form of architectural dreamscapes. Hafez takes his viewer through a journey and I feel as though I have done the same. I want to continue focusing on this sequential journey with the aid of Persian miniature paintings. I am validating the existence of these architectural fragments just as Nazgol Ansarinia recognizes and celebrates the debris created by construction. Nazgol focuses on the tangible debris and I am focusing on the phantom debris.
While Hafez depicts ruins that were brought by destruction and anguish, all of us in Iran are allowing this change to happen and we are all feeling lost. To continue I will be using a combination of Hafez and Ansarinia architectural focus, while capturing the surreal, virtual world of the Neverhood, and painting in narratives similar to Hwami. In hopes to show a piece of home, personal and raw. Exploiting the bare fabric of the houses that live in my mind. I am going to continue working with the concept of the void and fragments of architectural motifs that represent the house that are now rubble. And how this rubble connects to each other through this collaboration with Lauren.
References:
Alizadeh, A., 2010. Iran: My Grandfather. Melbourne: Transit Lounge, pp.1-3.
Barthes, R. and Howard, R., 2000. Camera lucida. 25th ed. London: Vintage, pp.4-5.
Nicholson-Smith, D. and Lefebvre, H., 1991. The Production of Space. Malden: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, pp.229-30.
Petersen, A., 2017. Migration into art. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp.5-6.
Schwarz, G. and Hafez, M., 2020. The Apollo 40 under 40 podcast: Mohamad Hafez. [podcast] Apollo 40 Under 40 Podcast. Available at: <https://www.apollo-magazine.com/the-apollo-40-under-40-podcast-mohamad-hafez/> [Accessed 1 February 2022].
Sotheby's Institute of Art / SOAS, 2019. Artist Talk: Kudzanai-Violet Hwami. [image] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqE99nEDMJw&ab_channel=Sotheby%27sInstituteofArt> [Accessed 1 February 2022].
The Guardian / Tate, 2016. Nazgol Ansarinia on Tehran – 'Neighbourhoods Are Changing So Fast' | Artist Cities. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaqVCZlrIhc&ab_channel=Tate> [Accessed 1 February 2022].
The Neverhood Wiki. 2009. The Neverhood. [online] Available at: <https://theneverhood.fandom.com/wiki/The_Neverhood> [Accessed 1 February 2022].
Whiteread, R., 1993. House. [Concrete].
Images:
Ansarinia, N. (2017). The Mechanisms of Growth, Demolishing Buildings, Buying Waste,. [Plaster and glue] Available at: https://www.gagallery.com/news/nazgol-ansarinia19 [Accessed 1 Feb. 2022].
Ansarinia, N. (2018). Murals stretched over 12 kilometers on the east and west sides of Sayyad Expressway. [Book] Siah Armajani - Follow This Line.
Hafez, M. (2016). Hiraeth. [Plaster, Paint, Antique Tricycle, Found Objects, Rusted Metal, Antique Wood Veneer] Available at: http://www.mohamadhafez.com/Hiraeth [Accessed 1 Feb. 2022]. Dimensions 61 x 35 x 21 d in (154 x 89 x 53 d cm).
Hwami, K.-V. (2017). Family Portrait. [Acrylic and Oil on Canvas] Available at: https://hero-magazine.com/article/108131/kudzanai-violet-hwami [Accessed 1 Feb. 2022].
The Neverhood, 1996. (n.d.). bestoldgames.net. Available at: https://www.bestoldgames.net/neverhood [Accessed 1 Feb. 2022].
Whiteread, R. (1993). House. [Concreate] Widewalls. Available at: https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/rachel-whiteread-house [Accessed 1 Feb. 2022].