Parya Vatankhah – curator

International programming of “Iranian Women artists, Sensibility against Violence”

Their common point is to be engaged and sensitive: sensitive to the violence and the oppression of political powers, calling for thought not to forget barbarism.
Through their Video Art medium, they represent the transformed body, the censored body, the erased body, questioning us about our identity in our contemporary societies.
The works of these Iranian origin, women artists, sometimes considered as provocative, play with social and religious norms, pushing the limits of the transgression and fighting against absurd taboos, offering us a dreamlike walk through metaphorical and poetic images.
Between dreams and reality, they immerse the viewer in their own visual universe, drawing the melancholy, the anguish and the pain of all those victims of war and exile, of all those suffering the separation imposed by geopolitical borders.

About the curator
Parya Vatankhah
is an Iranian visual artist, living and working for several years in Paris. Her artistic practice is multidisciplinary and involves painting, photography, video, performance and installation. She is interested in the contradictions of human thought and the existence of different realities for each of us in the face of a given situation, influenced by our past and by our private and social lives. The subjects of her work are nourished by her intimate and social experiments such as the Islamic revolution in Iran and its consequences on human rights violations and gender inequality, war, economic problems and also the experience of her immigration. Her works address the complexity of building oneself and knowing one’s own identity when the violence and suffering caused by political conflicts reach the intimate life. Her art is exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions, video art and contemporary art festivals, and at university conferences such as the Casablanca International Festival, Les instants vidéo de Marseille, London Feminist Film Festival, RMN-Grand Palais in Paris, Malmö̈ art center in Konsthall, Sweden and the Arad Art Museum in Romania. She is currently preparing a thesis in Aesthetics, Science and Technology of the Arts on the theme of the representation of the body in engaged and political art. She also teaches process project courses about the representation of the body in contemporary art at the Department of Fine Arts of the University of Paris 8.

Videos

Azadeh Nilchian (Iran) 
 – Zoorkhâneh, 2009-10, 4:26
Haleh Jamali (Iran) – The End of the Beginning 2018, 3:15
Sara Niroobakhsh (Iran) – Rainfall from Practice makes perfect series, 2015, 7:52
Golnaz MOSHIRIAN (Iran) – I see myself, 2011, 5:59
Roxy Farhat (Iran) – How Was Your Morning? 2018, 3:03
Parya Vatankhah (Iran) – Distance 2018, 6:43
Parya Vatankhah (Iran) – Passage 2016, 24:00
Rojin Shafiei (Iran) – Untitled 2015, 2:55
Mozhgan Erfani (Iran) – Khafaqan 2004, 1:19
Mozhgan Erfani (Iran) – Je me présente 2004, 1:18

  • Azadeh Nilchian 
 – Zoorkhâneh, 2009-10, 4:26
  • Video, Electroacoustic


    Between sound and movement, inspired by the Iranian sacred and ancient sport which is only for men, this video questions the situation of women as spectacles who could just look at this martial art without having rights to exercise it. The video represents a “moral action” but which exclude the women in traditional societies.

    Azadeh Nilchian
    is an Iranian-French visual artist. Her practice is interdisciplinary, combining sound, visual and space, including installation, video art and electroacoustic music.
    She is an associate researcher to the National Library of France on the collection of the International Institute of Electroacoustic Music of Bourges (IMEB) since October 2016, and has collaborated in the research program Les Arts Trompeurs – Machines, Magic, Media, Labex Art-H2H.
    In her sound installations, often an electroacoustic sound is accompanied by a visual aspect. The technique and capacity of digital art in her works give an opportunity to work about topics such as distance from her country of origin, melancholy, femininity and contemporary urban spaces. Since 2002, she has exhibited in Iran, France, Chile, Greece, Myanmar, Mexico, South Korea, Portugal, Sweden, Dubai, Finland, Spain and the United States.

  • Haleh Jamali – The End of the Beginning 2018, 3:15
  • color, stereo sound, video // Performer: Maral Shafaatdoost


    This work explores different stages of loss and hardship. Here we don’t enter and leave each individual stage in a linear fashion. We may spend different lengths of time working through each step and express each stage with different levels of intensity.

    Haleh Jamali
    is a multimedia artist, based in Glasgow. She was born and raised in Iran before moving to the United Kingdom in 2005. After a BA in painting from Azad Tehran University (2001–2005), she obtained a Master’s degree in Art and Media from Westminster University in London. The representation of the face and body in her works is an essential way to approach the social causes that affect our private lives, particularly for women, the problems of immigration, exile, and human rights, not to mention populations in extreme poverty and vulnerability. His multidisciplinary work is exhibited in several international festivals and exhibitions such as the Casablanca Video Art Festival, Les Instants Video Festival of Marseille, the video art festival of Koln in Geneva, Sweden, and the Time is Love exhibition in Buenos Aires. In September 2014, Haleh Jamali specialized in portrait painting using the sight-size method at Charles Cécile studio in Florence, Italy, and she is currently working on a new series of portraits entitled Resilience in respond to women’s empowerment movements #MeToo and Time’s Up.

  • Roxy Farhat – How Was Your Morning? 2018, 3:03
  • video, color, stereo sound

    Our modern cities tend to be built for humans as economical creatures rather than biological. How Was Your Morning? It is a visual and humorous interpretation of the psychological aftermath of the morning commute in an environment that oppresses our flesh and blood in favor of efficiency and economy.

    Born in 1984 in Tehran, Iran, Roxy Farhat
    is a feminist filmmaker whose works combine politics, kitsch and popular culture subjects, with humor and unfailing seriousness. During the Iran-Iraq war in August 1986, her family left Iran when she was only 2.5 years old. Since then, she has felt divided between Iran and Sweden and feels that she is not Swedish or Iranian enough. As she told me: “I still care a lot about Iran, even though I am geographically and culturally distant from my country. In my lifetime, I have found myself in countless situations where, for various and racist reasons, I have not been accepted as ‘Swedish’ or ‘European.’”
    In her video arts, she stages herself, provocative with clothes and extravagant styles to fight against certain overwhelming looks either by tradition or because religion imposes strict rules on women regarding their clothing and behavior. Farhat is an award-winning music video director and has worked with artists such as The Knife, Zhala and Gnucci. More recently, she directed “HUR,” a documentary art film, made in collaboration with young immigrant activists, which premiered at the Southbank Centre, London, in July 2017.

      

  • Sara Niroobakhsh – Rainfall from Practice makes perfect series, 2015, 7:52
  • Video, color, stereo sound, 7’52”

    A woman with a bored face, made up and combed like an object woman sits on the floor. The repetitive act of cleaning rice becomes the unique emblem of its identity. Niroobakhsh refers to the political and religious powers in Iran, which limit women’s activities in society.

    Sara Niroobakhsh
    is a multidisciplinary Iranian artist living in Toronto, Canada.
    Her performative and visual works explore a variety of subjects such as the social status of women and gender equality.
    Niroobakhsh’s work evokes the situation of women by drawing them in the personal, mythological and cultural fields, addressing the semiotic theme of beauty, isolation, creativity and fertility.
    Niroobakhsh’s work reflects the many archetypal faces and roles that Iranian women are forced to accept through traditional or political depressions.
    Her recent exhibitions include the Czech China Contemporary Museum in Beijing, the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts and the CICA Museum in South Korea. Her famous work, Rice, was exhibited at Hamra Art Space, Beirut, 2015. As a result of this project, she received a residency award at the BAiR Spring Intensive at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Calgary, Canada, 2017).
    The Party, her latest installation at Gallery 44, obtains a grant from the Ontario Arts Council.

  • Parya Vatankhah – Distance 2018, 1:40
  • Video, stereo sound, color, two version duration: 1’40” and 6’43”

  • Parya Vatankhah – Passage 2016, 3:00
  • Video performance, color, stereo sound, two version duration: 3’00” and 24’09”

    Passage is about our limits in space and time. A woman, dressed in white, folded in a fetal position, struggles in a white, cramped space evoking imprisonment and suffocation. For me, white is the symbol of purity, birth and innocence, but it also represents the hospital universe (including psychiatric one).

    It is about the reality and the dream: How do we travel in time, between our past and our future inside our dreams? Distances based on my recurring nightmare. This video could refer to a prison, to someone lost between real and unreal.

    Parya Vatankhah
    is an Iranian visual artist, living and working for several years in Paris. Her artistic practice is multidisciplinary and involves painting, photography, video, performance and installation.
    She is interested in the contradictions of human thought and the existence of different realities for each of us in the face of a given situation, influenced by our past and by our private and social lives. The subjects of her work are nourished by her intimate and social experiments such as the Islamic revolution in Iran and its consequences on human rights violations and gender inequality, war, economic problems and also the experience of her immigration. Her works address the complexity of building oneself and knowing one’s own identity when the violence and suffering caused by political conflicts reach the intimate life. Her art is exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions, video art and contemporary art festivals, and at university conferences such as the Casablanca International Festival, Les instants vidéo de Marseille, London Feminist Film Festival, RMN-Grand Palais in Paris, Malmö̈ art center in Konsthall, Sweden and the Arad Art Museum in Romania. She is currently preparing a thesis in Aesthetics, Science and Technology of the Arts on the theme of the representation of the body in engaged and political art. She also teaches process project courses about the representation of the body in contemporary art at the Department of Fine Arts of the University of Paris 8.

  • Rojin Shafiei – Untitled 2015, 2:55
  • Video, stereo sound, black and white

    This work explores how we can have different perceptions of our own body in relation to the place and context in which it is located? The artist explains that her motivation for creating this piece is that she did not feel safe through her female body in society, and even in the most intimate relationships in Iran.

    Rojin Shafiei
    (born in 1993) is an Iranian visual artist who lives and works in Montreal. In her art, video and installation are vehicles for the translation of her questions about society, particularly Iran, in relation to human rights, gender equality, freedom of expression and censorship. She presents these themes both through a literal documentary style and in the form of symbols. The subjects of her work are also inspired by the observation of routines in our contemporary lives, both in individual life and in urban societies.
    Rojin received her BFA (Intermedia) from Concordia University in 2017 and has presented her work at the Rendez-Vous du Cinéma Québécois (Montreal), the Casablanca Festival of Video Art, Les Instants Vidéos in Marseille, the Mzansi Women’s Film Festival (Johannesburg), the Limited Access Video Festival (Tehran) and the Josiah Media Festival (San Antonio). She won the Startupfest Grand Prize, Artup section in July 2018.

  • Mozhgan Erfani – Khafaqan 2004, 1:19
  • Video, stereo sound, color

    The Farsi word « Khafaqan » means stuffy, oppressive. The hands, in prayer position, confess us the isolation and the loss of their form and identity by getting covered gradually until being totally hidden by this words and blackend. Whispering « Khafaqan » simultaneously invade the ears to fortify the stuffy sensation for the spectator.

  • Mozhgan Erfani – Je me présente 2004, 1:18
  • Video, stereo sound, color, 1’18”

    In « Je Me Présente » calligraphy loses its decoration function. The word written on the hands “Khafaqan” means “Oppressive” in Persian language.
    “Khafaqan” gradually infects and invades both hands, so that they lose their own personal and distinctive shape; A sort of non-existence and loss of identity among the veiled women.

    Mozhgan Erfani,
    (born in 1973) is a visual artist, of Iranian origin, living in Paris.
    She holds a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the Sorbonne University. She chose immigration because she has suffered numerous arrests and repeated police custody by religious state guards for not wearing the veil and not respecting Islamic laws in the country. But her motivation to come to France was to go there to pursue her studies and artistic activities.
    Her artistic practice includes short films, video installations, photographs and performances. Her works are essentially based on the intracorporeal and psychic female struggle of the Orient, caused by the opposition between morals and modernity, religion and lack of freedom.
    She has exhibited in several museums, galleries and art festivals in several countries, such as the 3rd International Art Biennale in Moscow, Russia, the Pori Art Museum in Finland, the Gongju in Chungnam, South Korea, the Schneeberger Gallery in Münster, Germany.
    She was selected by Persbook as the winner.

  • Golnaz MOSHIRIAN – I see myself, 2011, 5:59
  • Video, stereo sound, black and white

    She staged with a shaved head, expressing her suffering and her revolt against a society that denies her identity as a woman.
    An enigmatic, icy black and white image, accompanied by haunting music, reminds us of the black magic that accompanies our lives in societies without freedom of expression.

    Golnaz Moshirian
    is an Iranian visual artist, living and working in Paris. Since her childhood, she has had a passion for creating objects about what she thinks and what she care, something new that can touch the audience. She found that drawing, painting and other forms of visual arts are the proper tools for expressing her ideas.
    These different artistic possibilities turned her into an interdisciplinary artist, to express her sensibility about the women and her situation in the different societies from east to west. Her works are also about the violence and sufferance all over the world which is caused by human-being.
    During these years, she has worked and cooperated with different companies as an art director, graphic designer, digital painter, concept artist, and photographer. She has also made and directed video arts for different groups and companies.