Source:Obsession
In this project called “Source:Obsession”, which I present as a collection of installation and photos, I talk about the fact that I am an Iranian woman with plenty of issues that I've been facing, since my childhood. Another issue is the fact that I've had lots of challenges in my life before and after my immigration. Of course the challenges that I had when I was in Iran were totally different from the ones that I've been experiencing abroad, but the context is almost the same, it's just the form that has been altered.
When I was in my country, Iran, I was a woman who was supposed to be a Muslim, officially born as a Muslim without having chosen it freely. I didn't have the same education at home and at school since my family wasn't religious at all. I had to lie about my life at school and play another role (person): what made my situation even worse was that I was the daughter of a political activist and prisoner who was executed when I was 3. I never had the advantage and the right to create artworks about my real life and tell my real story back in Iran.
After my immigration I'm still hiding myself in a way. I can't totally erase the thoughts and limits (these limits have been transformed to some kind of obsession) which have become a part of my character and you can still see that in my works. I am the same person with possibly much more freedom abroad, but in a way, it's too late to change this person with all those obsessions which are a result of her environment. Unconsciously (or not), in Iran I censored myself in many ways and I'm still living this censorship, even when I’m free of all those limits! So in my works that I create now, the obsessions and the comportment that I had are still there like they have become a part of my character. Although I still have the same issues and obsessions which have changed their forms but not their concepts, I have a freer space to show them and at least talk about them in my artworks, which was a loss in Iran as long as I hadn't any right to show them in my art works.
“The human existence takes form in the course of one’s life. A person, namely an artist’s existence is a combination of his/her psychological state, the inner self, and the environment in which he/she has grown up. This essence of existence never leaves the artist, no matter how her environment changes, repressions, sufferings, and those key moments of life follow the artist all her life.
After moving to Paris, Paul Cezanne wrote: “The only thing I have changed is my location: my ennui has followed me”.”
This project was exhibited in The Hague (The Netherlands) in Gemak Gallery.
