 Okay. Good evening and a warm welcome to the first artist talk of what is hoped to be part of a series of webinars or artist talks. My name is Hamid Keshmir Shekan and I'm a senior teaching for the White School of Arts, SOAS. I need to especially thank the Center for Iranian Studies SOAS for hosting this event, in particular, and I guess Farzad, the chair of the Center for her support and also Aki El-Bozi for coordinating the event and IT supports. This session is being recorded and after the talk the floor will be open to the audience and you are invited to write your questions in the chat box or Q&A box. Today it is my great pleasure to welcome Simin Karamati to our webinar. Simin will speak to us from Toronto and we'll be talking about the tragic to your artistic practices with particular attention paid to your recent projects. Just a very brief introduction about her works. I'm sure many of you are already familiar with her works and herself, but just as a matter of introduction. Simin Karamati is an Iranian-Canadian master's degree in Fine Arts from the Art University of Tehran and postgraduate degree from the George Brown College in Toronto. She has received several prizes and awards, including the grand prize from the Dakar International Biennale in 2004 for her video installation entitled Rising Up or Falling Down. Her works have been exhibited in art galleries and museums internationally. Among the most recent ones are the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Red Hat Museum in Los Angeles, Saarland Museum in Saarland, Germany and Royal Chapel Gallery in London. Working with a wide range of media including photography, film and painting, Karamati explores various subjects and concepts derived from her personal life, the news, social media and also history and literature. Her works often address the themes such as identity, diasporic experience, women's rights and gender equality. In many of her art practices, critical observation of the society and politics is depicted through self-presentation. She focuses on self and all which is evolving within self, haunted by the external elements. It testifies the fact that she maintains furious probe into the immediate surroundings, even when she examines the literary sources and the history particularly in her recent projects. I've been lucky to have known Simeon and her work for about 20 years now and have collaborated on a few exhibitions of her works including the Guangzhou Video Art Festival in 2012. That was a great privilege. Simeon, thank you very much again for joining us this evening and the floor is yours. Hello. First of all, let me thank you to so as for organizing this talk today and also thank you to Dr. Hamid Keshmishia for inviting me for this talk and chairing this talk today. I am so pleased to be here and conducting and delivering this talk and representing some of my artworks because of the limitation of time I have have selected a number of my video arts and multimedia installations and through the talk that I am going to deliver today you will see the transition of my work through this time. Just give me a second and it will be okay, everything. So the first artwork that I am going to talk about today is self-portrait. I did this video art in 2007. The length of this video art is seven minutes and 21 seconds. In this piece the audience witnesses as my face slowly melts into the darkness portrayed on camera until eventually I become faceless. At some point this transformation also serves as a tribute to the 1999 student movements in Iran which resulted in countless deaths and incarceration of the university's students. On the other hand, big changes was happening in my life during that year and it also has some psychological parts included layers. Watching the video, the audience reads my thoughts, transcripts onto the screen. Overall my intention was to use this self-portrait as a platform for addressing social, political, and gender segregation issues. So let me show you a section of this video. Insomnia is another video art I did in 2010. The length of this video is seven minutes and eight seconds. The image comprises the window of my bedroom, the light white curtain that moves through the morning breeze and the cloudy sky that stays gray and does not even rain. The sound is recorded on an early morning of a weekend in Tehran. As you know, Tehran is a very busy and crowded city. I needed a calm atmosphere sound so I chose to record it on a weekend during early morning. For this piece, I incorporated lines from Virginia Woolf's The Waves. I chose the parts that are talking about sleeping and somehow singing and whispering a lullaby. So that said, I have to add this information here that literature has a significant presence in most of my artworks. Whether directly or indirectly, I utilize literature to enhance the story or add narration to my videos while I may not adhere to the original story or structure. I choose pieces based on the theme I'm exploring and select lines that best align with my focus. Here in this video art, I'm talking about the desperate sleepless nights and days that we were experiencing every day in the aftermath of the protests in the result of the presidential election in 2009 that led to the imprisonment and death of lots of individuals in Iran. The painless method is a video art I did in 2013. The length of this video is 8 minutes and 13 seconds. I created this video art as a response to the capital punishment. Unfortunately, Iran ranks second in the world for executions with only China surpassing them. So I have to add here that I moved to Canada, I immigrated to Canada in 2012. The fact is that after I moved to Canada, I believed now that I'm outside of the country, I cannot work on the same social and political issues about Iran. At that time, it did not seem right to me until the execution of the two young adults happened. In 2013, two young men, one 19 years old and the other 20, were executed publicly in the park that belongs to the art forum in Tehran during the morning prayer. Their charge was robbery with a cold weapon, which was a very big knife. At this point, I could not stay silent and do nothing about it. That said, to create this video art, I conducted extensive research to gain a new perspective. Though I am connected to my past, I realized the importance of examining things differently and adjusting my artwork accordingly. That said, I did a research on the history of execution all around the world. And I focused only on the executions by beheading and hanging. In this work, I also have incorporated lines from the book Gholistan by Sadie Shirazi, an Iranian renowned poet from the 13th century. I chose the lines that are talking about the pleasantness of breathing. The writer constantly reminds us that how thankful we shall be to God that gifted us the sense of pleasure we experience after each inhalation and each exhalation. So after that, I did this video art, which is also a manifest in 2014. I am not a female artist from the Middle East in exile. I am an artist. The length of this video is 15 minutes and 57 seconds, which is almost 16 minutes. With this video art, I did another manifesto where I draw inspiration from a well-known quote by American artist, Jean-Michel Batskin, who said, I'm not a black artist. I am an artist. It is important to note that addressing individuals using a descriptor other than what it is typical can create a sense of separation from the norm. While inclusion is important, it can also be falsely manipulated. Our identities can serve as both a starting point and a tool to fight against segregation and establish our existence. I wanted to emphasize that my background is one of an artist with a unique history. But is this not a common experience for every artist, regardless of where they come from or what gender they are? In this video art, you see the artist sitting in front of the camera and in the first minute, almost the first minutes, my nose starts bleeding and it never stops until the end of the video. It just continues. The sound effect of this video is telling the story of my life from my childhood ever since 2014 that I chose to live in Canada. I didn't translate any of the sounds. There are no subtitles on this video art. The section that I've chosen today to show you is talking about the period that there was a war between Iran and Iraq. When I was a child, we had a life. Then the 1979 revolution happened. Then the war between Iran and Iraq happened. It lasted for eight years. When it happened, I was a child. Then when it ended, I was a school teenager. After that, good things happened in my personal life and then protests happened in Iran. The sound is talking about all of this history. The sounds that you will hear now are the Red Alert, the military marches, the stories of the frontiers and the soldiers and the martyrdom of the warriors in the front lines, and then the end of the war. This is the section for today. The sound effect of this video art. The sound effect of this video art. Misplacement and immigration was the two things that my life was merged with. I started to include misplacement and immigration into my artwork. The space in between all the physical objects. I did this video art in 2015. Each channel is with a length of 23 minutes and five seconds. This is a three-channel video installation investigating the cause of migration and misplacement. In this artwork, I have studied the huge migration of the people fleeing hunger, war and oppression from their homelands. Yet they ultimately lose their lives drowning into the seas in search of peace. In this art piece, I have incorporated the lines from the book, The Red Sense, which has also been translated, which is also translated into the Red Intellect. This is the second time that I have been inspired by this book by Sohrabardi, a 12th-century Iranian philosopher and writer who was executed for his thoughts. The story of this book is about the spiritual and philosophical journey of a bird that transforms into a red-flying creature. In this work, I have been focused on the search for the tuba tree that can be found only in Neverland. In this story, tuba is a tree that promises to bring peace and happiness through its fruits to those who reach it. In my piece, however, the individuals who yearn to find this tree lost their lives in search of it. My goal was to create a sense of universality by depicting a diverse and relatable group of people. Rather than focusing on specific cultures or regions, I sought to convey the idea that we are all witnesses to this tragedy. Using poetic visuals, I have captured the very last moments of each person's life as they drowned under the sea. The centerpiece, the channel in the center, is a corpse gently brought to shore by the waves surrounded by photographs of the migrants arranged in the shape of a boat. Again, I continue to work on the theme of misplacement and the causes of immigration in my other video installation on the edge of the cloud. But this time, my focus is towards the reaction of the people who read about these news. The edge of the cloud is at 27 minutes and 18 seconds length for each channel, a two-channel video installation that explores the theme of migration and the impact of war on individuals. The video is displayed across two screens placed opposite to each other with the audience positioned in between. To fully appreciate the piece, the viewers must turn their head toward each channel to find the connection between them. The video follows the story of a heroine who has witnessed the horrors of war and lost loved ones along the way. The monologue is told through subtitles that run throughout the entire length of the video. Alongside this, the artwork also examines the reactions of people and social media to tragic events like war, revealing the sense of helplessness many feel in the face of such disasters. The audience witnesses the rise and fall of a heroine who in time will be forgotten. Finally, the video explores the impact of identity in the lives of migrants fleeing war and hunger. It highlights the forces that pushed refugees back to the sea to drown. And in doing so, challenges viewers to rethink the power and influence of identity in our global community. One thing to add and I forgot to add previously is that you see for this demonstration, I had to put the two channels or the three channels of each of the video installation that you see beside each other. And you are hearing the sound from one source which is your devices. But in fact, when you're in the middle of the installation, there are different sound sources and you can focus on each sound if you want, if you wish. The people that you are seeing on the darker screen are actually the people who are reacting to the death of the person in the middle on the white screen. And they are somehow watching, like sitting in a theater, watching a movie about their reactions about their life. Unsolicited love letters is my most recent video installation. I did this work in 2023. This is a triptych of videos, a three-channel video installation. The length of each video is 23 minutes and 43 seconds. It's almost 24 minutes for each channel that will run together. This video draws inspiration from the timeless story of Leili and Majnun by Nizami Gangebi, who is an Iranian poet and writer from 13th century. The equivalent of this love story in Western literature, we can say, is Shakespeare's Romeo and Julia. Leili and Gaze, the story is about Leili and Gaze, they fall in love. This was not accepted by their families and tribes. Leili is forced to marry another man. Gaze goes mad and chooses to live a wide life. So from that point onward, his alias becomes Majnun. Majnun in Arabic means the mad man. And we use it as well in Persian language. Majnun here is madly in love. So I wanted to work on a love story. And this was the greatest love story from all time in the Middle East. So I decided to work on this one. But in different layers, I'm also working about misplacement and also questioning the gender equality because the classical love stories have this male gaze over them. And the love lover and the actions of love are always being done by the man lover. So as part of my exploration on displacement and identity, my artwork delves into liberation of the senses based on gender in society. Through history, women and marginalized genders have been limited from expressing themselves visually, audibly, and through touch. How do these societal norms influence a woman's perception of herself and the world around her? The project reimagines Leili in a new location as a middle-aged immigrant woman who lives a solitary life. Her beloved Majnun exists only in her thoughts and memories. And she speaks passionately of the undying love they've shared. As she relays her tale, she also touches on the themes of war and the immigrant experience. All the while demonstrating her autonomy and pride in her own passion. These are the images that I chose to show you how I made the character of how I worked on the character of Leili to make her a contemporary modern woman. But at some point, she has this at some point, at some sections of the work, she has this traditional look as well. And Majnun is this young man who lives in the mind of Leili in a void. And I have worked a lot on the character, on this character. And so in the end, I decided to follow the work of the Armenian-renowned filmmaker Sege Parjanov in his movie, The Color of Pomegranate. So I've been influenced by that one in creation of the character of Majnun in this artwork. If you have more questions, ask me when the talk is over about this filmmaker. So here I'm showing you a one minute section of this long tail and video installation. Again, you're hearing the sound from through one device, which is through one source of sound, which is your devices. But in real installation, you will hear the sound separately from three different sound systems, and you can focus on each of them. So I forgot to add this thing that in the original story, Leili wrote letters to Majnun, so that's why I chose this title for this video installation, which is a love story. Elephant in the Dark is the title of a multimedia installation that I did. It is on view at the Aga Khan Museum currently in Toronto in the exhibition entitled Rumi, which is celebrating the life and legacy of the poet Rumi. This is an interactive and immersive installation based on the story by Rumi with the same title. The story is about a group of people that have never confronted an elephant in real life. They have to enter into a dark room where an elephant is placed there and the people have to touch the creature with their bare hands and describe their understanding of its shape. Their expressions are not even close to reality and this makes the story fun. In the end Rumi says that if you could share your ideas or even if you could bring a candle with you in the room, you could have a better understanding of the whole creature. So I chose this story because it is full of images that said I put the audience in the middle of the story immersed by the images in an interactive multimedia installation with translucent 3D printed resin sculptures. The work is based on a classical story that talks about the importance of sharing experiences and the use of all senses in understanding a shape or a theme. So to be honest this is the first time so far that I have been fully loyal and faithful to the original story so I didn't need a part of this story. I wanted the whole story so I worked on it. In this multimedia installation I managed to build a round shaped room so when the audience enters the room there is on one side there are these three objects 3D printed light shiny objects that resemble parts of an elephant body and they can touch it and then they can turn on the screens and the screens are showing a very close-up image of the elephant followed by a line of the story and on the other wall which is again a round wall I created apertures. Behind these apertures the huge creature is moving and the audience can only see some parts of it they can never see the whole the whole image. If they want they can go closer and closer to the aperture to see what part of the elephant they are seeing what is the skin look like and to have a better understanding of the installation I made this video in the elephant museum for this talk today. So the audience can enter the room on one hand and they can see these sculptures they can touch them they can push the button and then the image will appear and the sound and it will be followed by a line of the poem and on the other side when they turn around on the other side they can see these apertures on the wall that the creature is moving behind them and they cannot have a full image of the huge creature so they are actually in this story walking in the story and in the images that Rumi was creating with his literature with his words. So when they go out of the room and they just look at the room from a distance they can see the whole image of an elephant herd or an individual elephant so they can have the complete image finally. The last work that I'm going to talk about is a work that I started to do when I sent my proposal it was April 2022 and eventually it turned to be a protest art so I will tell the story very briefly here. Pekon art car is a non-profit non-partisan organization that unites Iranian contemporary artists with a classical Iranian car Pekon which is which was a beloved national vehicle this Hillman hunter that was after the revolution it was used as taxis in Iran. So they do this to advocate for the restoration of human rights and dignity for all in Iran no matter their race, religion, gender or their sexual orientation. I sent as I said I started to work on this research-based project in April 2022. My my proposal was about the resistance for the freedom of expression and the history of women's fight women's resistance for freedom of choice to to wear. To do so I started to work on the documentation that we have the oldest documentation that we have for this goes back to around 170 years ago the time that Tahira Boratulayn an Iranian philosopher and poet unveiled herself publicly and she was executed. So I at that time I decided to title to entitle the work as eye to eye which is a translation of one of the most popular poems by Tahira Boratulayn but I changed it I will tell you why. So I started to work on it there were very a lot of resistance were made by renowned women, unknown women, underground movements, underground communities by women were made for this resistance throughout history. The closer we are to the current time we have more documentation about this resistance by women and I continued my study until my research until the Engalab Street girls which started by the the movement started by the action of Vida Mubahed. So the girls in 2017 went on to went over a utility box or on a higher place in a crowded street to peacefully demand the right for freedom of expression. At that point we I was waiting for the car for the canvas to come so we started to incorporate a lot of human hair natural human hair and so while we were incorporating the hair and we were waiting for the car to come there were some obstacles for the transition of the car. The incident for Sepideh Rashnu happened so Sepideh Rashnu was a young university girl, is a young university girl that was not wearing a hijab in a bus so she eventually went to to fight with the women related to morality polices and then she was jailed and she was tortured to force confession and eventually she had to apologize publicly to the leaders and to the country because she was not wearing her hijab so that was a big oppression and okay we thought okay we have time we will include this in the research and then Masa Amini's killing happened she was killed while she was in custody because she was wearing her hijab not properly and then this was the start of one of the most progressive revolutionary movements in Iran which is called the women life freedom at this point I was sewing the hair I was working on it but I thought okay who am I what I'm doing it's not right women in Iran are literally putting their lives in danger they are resisting they are literally being killed or being tortured being imprisoned but they are fighting for their lives and this was the time that an artwork was not enough so I was sewing the hair I was working on it because it made me feel closer to to the Iranian women and they fight but we couldn't show the work it was not right it was it was in the middle of a revolution so an artwork does not work so we waited until this time at this time and this time and in this sense we need to tell the story of what happened last year in Iran we need to tell that this resistance is going on women in Iran are still fighting are still resisting this is not ended this has not ended so I went to New York I completed the installation I transformed the canvas the car into a hairy creature I covered it with human natural hair a lot of this hair was donated by my friends who cut their hair and a lot of people that I don't know them personally but they donated also their hair to be added to this installation and this is a multimedia installation comprising of a pile of human hair two video installations one sound installation and I did all of it on the paycon so at this point this is a protest art we changed the title to Masa Amini herself Masa Amini I believe a protest art is not an artwork it's a protest art and all the credit goes to to the resistance and the fights that the Iranian women are doing a protest art influenced and dedicated to the bravery of women in Iran this work will be launched in June 13 this year like two weeks from now in Oslo freedom from in Norway thank you for listening thank you very much same John for this fascinating talk thank you you know with us you're very impressive works I'm almost overwhelmed with thank you so I tried to be fast and stick to the limited time and I know I skipped a lot of information if there's any question I'm here to answer wonderful thank you very much yes please could you write your questions in the Q&A chat and so I will get through the question but before the questions coming up can I just ask you a question that I was just thinking when you're presenting your work especially some of them actually I was quite intrigued by you mentioning your challenges with existing expectations mainly related to the idea of stereotypes perhaps best reflected in your work as or as you put it your manifesto I am not a female artist from the Middle East in your later projects you referenced some all sources in particular Persian literature for example in elephant in the dark at the on your team I would be very interested if you could elaborate on how you found it's a challenging and how you think you overcome the potential pre-existing expectation that yeah that at the time that I did in 2014 when I did that video art I was on edge with the expectations that I was newly coming from a country that was it was still in the aftermath of the green movement at the time and it was very exotic to talk about it and I didn't want to get trapped by the expectations as you said as you mentioned but by the stereotype so to answer your question I will refer again to Jean-Michel Basquet who I borrowed this title from him he said I'm not a black artist I am an artist he was not denying his race but he was fighting for equality so for instance Jean-Michel Basquet we also remember Andy Warhol no one called Andy Warhol a white American artist you see what I mean so when I was saying that I was I was making this manifesto that just let me talk don't expect me don't don't judge me from my background it is included I am this this is real but let me let me talk about it let me be creative and then you can critic you can criticize if you want so that was it right I I'm not sure if I answer your question yeah sure thank you thank you very much so let's get through the questions there are a few questions and the first one is from Katy Shohan there saying thank you for fascinating and very informative talk can you please tell us more about the role of autobiography autobiography in Europe in Iran or in my work in general your autobiography I mean how the your autobiographical experience would perhaps right thank you for the question this is a very good question so for me autobiography works in the way that I can work in both psychological and then as an interpretation on what's going on so in the for instance if I'm talking about social political terms if I'm talking about immigration and misplacement if I'm talking about a love story I need an interpreter and I think my body I can do whatever I want to my body but if I choose another one I have to be responsible for that I think autobiography just helps you to be more honest to be honest and then at the same time the artist puts herself or himself puts themselves in a vulnerable situation so you can criticize the artist right thanks very much and another question is from Behbahani thank you for this wonderful presentation I was wondering if you can elaborate more on your definition of protest art and how it is different to art that reflect on societal changes or regime okay um this is complicated I I cannot make an statement but I believe that a protest art is dedicated to a movement when when a movement is happening and you do something alongside the people that are doing that movement or demanding something it's not it doesn't have to be always a revolutionary movement you're protesting for something so you you want to be aligned with those people with those demands so this um this is working together but when you're creating an artwork you are doing it from a distance you're working on a history so it is an artwork eventually like either one or the other one they they they will have an effect on the changes in the society or vice versa the the changes in the society can have an effect on the art world but um that is my definition and thank you very much for this very very good question um yeah I think um an artwork is is based on a research based on on um a knowledge based on a sense but a protest art is related to something else directly that is the only difference I see uh if if there is any ambiguity please ask again and I if I can I will continue to to talk about it thank you uh another question or note from Nazy Sudovar thank you for your thought provoking and important artistic expression of what humanity has been facing two questions I couldn't find the second one but the first one is the sound and the prints of text and the quality of text and I mean I think the sound was all right but the prints of text or the quality of images on most of the frames were quite weak unreadable and non-visible was this deliberate I think it was yeah for this uh for this presentation because of the copyright issues because I I am an artist and I sell editions of this artworks I had to be cautious with the um demonstrations that I will have uh so I didn't try to have the best quality that I can for this demonstration I'm sorry about that okay I will read the second one later after it came but uh in the meantime it says fantastic works where you influence Bashir Neshad although your work is both more literally referenced and more political than I didn't get the uh comment I didn't understand I mean well the question is were you ever inspired by Bashir Neshad or her work and that's all if if not yeah it is I have a very yeah I have a very great um respect for artists great artists um including Bashir Neshad um I have been inspired by everyone in these history of all world and whenever I have been inspired by an artist I have definitely mentioned it in in my artwork as well as the um recent artwork um Leyli and Majnun the unsolicited love letters that I said that I was influenced by um the Armenian director Sergei Parajanov and his work the color of permanent granite if I have been directly influenced by a writer an author an artist like Jean-Michel Basquet like anyone I have included that in the information in this statement or in the title of the work other than that I can say that I have learned a lot from all the great artists including Shireen Neshad yes excellent thank you Reginald Mohamed Zadeh says do you see me and you mentioned you do not believe in protest art I didn't see you said so I don't know and so as an Iranian artist living in the constitutional Iran what is our role how should we act as artists in a provocative way so let me um explain and repeat it again I didn't say that I don't believe in protest art the the latest um I'm in two weeks I'm I'm going to exhibit a protest art I believe that a protest art is not credited only to the artist and there is not um like everyone a lot of the protest art that you see are done by unknown people because of the situation they are um so they they don't credit any name over the artwork so it is the movement that credits the the protest art um I believe in protest art I didn't say that um but um and it's influential it can it can make changes to to to the demands and to to the movements but when you do an artwork you do it um with a distance if you're working for instance I was working my self-portrait and I was influenced by the movement students movement in the 1999 in Kuyya Donizhka and what happened there that that is an artwork I was not involved in that artwork when I was creating in that movement when I was creating that but um so when I started to work for instance on the um Pekon art car with this freedom of expression at at first I was do I was I thought that I'm going to do an artwork because I was doing a research I was working on that then I I was then we all was in the middle of a movement so it cannot be an artwork anymore it is talking about a movement so it is a protest art um that is my my definition of this thank you and Janet tells us how do you gain an understanding of the experience to women taking part in the women life freedom protest and what are what are your key considerations when representing this experience so what is my what are the main perhaps points that you would like to express in your works why about women life freedom okay this is the first artwork that I'm this is a protest art I cannot say that but um so during the the revolution we and my one of my other um colleague artist friend Gino Stack is there we we did um managed to arrange to to to do performance art with other artists it was a group work so we did that kind of protest performances but the credit does not go to us it goes to the movement it goes to the movement because if if there was not a movement happening this performance would not be there and um so if you're asking what I'm doing about it how I included in it and how I include this movement into my artwork these are the things that I'm doing but in my artwork I think in the future I can talk about it now I'm I'm too too much involved with it to to talk about it in my artwork separately did I answer the question or do I have to elaborate more um you could if you want but I think that would suffice for now um um apps we should uh continue with um other questions as well uh also the El Miza this is a thank you Simenjan for sharing your work with us I'm wondering what do you think about the impact of political art in the context of the hospital I mean not within the context where the actual social and political issues are you mentioned about you know when you moved to yeah that was that was my struggle when I moved to to to another country but um that said um at that point from 2012 onward so I I moved to Canada in the middle of the year um I thought that I have to reimagine I have to recreate I have to do more research and I have to to work on the issues that I'm I'm I want to work from the place that I am seeing that I'm not in in the middle of that um social political situation I am connected to that that is the cause that I have moved here that I'm living here so it's not separated from me but I have to work on this from this position this geographical position that I'm placed in so that's why I expanded my view for instance for the um painless method I started to work on the history of execution not only uh about Iran so um I mean if you if you consider one of the ways can be if you consider your position your place your distance from what's happening and include um your information uh from your point of view um that would be more meaningful yes sure great thank you and uh Omid Shah Karees says thank you Simin John for your presentation the challenge that that basket uh had in Bill Hook's words was to be accepted in the art world as an artist but the problem was the art world was and still to great degree is made a dominant advice uh supremacist european eurocentric and uh he was not letting unless he had to choose to accept himself branded as a black american and his work many times got associated with the african primitive how do you see your work in relation to this dominant made of a eurocentric post-modern post-colonial art world since you show your pieces in contemporary spaces a great question yeah that is right um i think i have i'm struggling with the same um not me like i think any artist from that is not white male uh european center it is struggling with the same um thing um constantly so i think um that manifest works that i made after john michael basquet still works so um yeah it's not been solved it is not a solvable matter i mean like it's it's an issue that exists um but it it it shouldn't stop us from talking about it and um objecting objecting it yes that's right yes i mean this is a problematic situation i think many so-called nervous artists are grappling with still arts international arts yeah um and i just uh in the meantime that you know until we get new questions from the audience i ask you another question which is a bit different from this line of questions it's about something that i found very interesting in your works and i would really love if you could just talk a little bit more about it they said when you i mean many of your works you're dealing with personal psychological challenges in your personal war personal life uh but it's uh in fact at the same time you're trying to express um i mean through these kinds of personal challenges more collective challenges in your surrounding context so you should have a new very wrong or then you are now in canada i'm just thinking about amnesia i think for example uh the work that you explained how you were affected by the most real post-selection uh years and the situation and you just uh if you could uh a little bit elaborate on this aspect of your work as well um yeah um yeah that's right when you when you um autograph when you have a when you when you um autoportrait create an autoportrait so you are somehow i as i mentioned before put you put yourself in a vulnerable position to be judged um to be criticized and um it can also include your personal and psychological layers of your life um it is obvious so for instance in in in the video art the first one that i showed the self-portrait um although i was um objecting to to what happened to the students i was retelling relaying retelling uh the the story of the students of quia danish going to run at the same time very big um changes was happening in my personal life so uh this is a connection um i don't know i'm i'm born in in in in iran and my mentality is like this your personal life is included in into your social life even though i'm it's more than 10 years that i'm living in in canada i i have the same attitude so my social life reflects in my personal life and i have a dialogue between them so that's why when i work on a love story i also include misplacement i want to talk about the liberation of senses of women but i also talk about migration of war and war which i have been traumatized since my childhood and it exists it has it has always been exists it has always exist in my um in my artwork great um i may have another question to put that seems that uh the audience they just gently encourage you to write your questions if they're easy uh otherwise i have another question to ask you and that is perhaps again uh about both visual and literary aspect of your works and the importance of language or text in your works and corporate within your videos mostly i mean from first work that you should self-portrait until the recent ones uh yes i mean how you think i mean you usually use both english and persian texts and i could perhaps understand when you want the audience to read your texts in both two different kinds of audiences in two different you know uh kind of uh language backgrounds uh i mean there are references to literature sometimes or some of your interpretation of literary or poetic texts for example in amnesia and i believe that you used the the the text from uh what was the author virginia wolf virgin the book the waves yes and so i mean my question is because they are not really they are acting more than simply subtitles or uh actually uh you know even acting as a visual element but you really want the audience viewer to read them um could you just uh explain a little bit about your yeah yeah existence and you know and emphasis on that the presence of text and how they really and they should work within your works thank you for the question yes exactly like um even in in in my multimedia installation the the elephant in the dark i have incorporated the lines of the story in in the um videos so um the word the shape of the words are characters of my videos installations artworks um i don't remember that i have used words actual words and calligraphy in my paintings and photography but in my videos they are a character a part of my work so for instance when you see my thoughts they are being written they are being um i don't know how do you explain it so crossed out and um so the image of of the word is important for me and the power that the literature that i choose the the power of the words also adds value to my video arts and video installations for instance when i choose up a word from virginia wolf she has a character in literature worldwide so the character adds um to to what i want to say and i choose words i i'm not faithful or i'm not loyal to the original story but the the words that i want are are being told by virginia wolf or by foro farozo or by sohre verdi so that that will include in my work um yeah i i i'd rather have them written uh at some point there are some some works that i have used them at subtitles but again i'm reading them for instance in in leili and majnun beyond solicited love letters i'm reading them so the story is part of my my artwork yeah okay thank you very much so they have different functions depending on the work necessity of the presence thank you very much uh once again uh uh on behalf of uh so as thank you very much same engine for uh joining us this evening and sharing your wonderful works with us and thank you very much audience for uh joining us today and hopefully we will have uh next sessions on the artist talks in the future and that would be great to have you all again all right again we can't really physically uh you know uh for seeming john but you know from the distance thank you again very much everyone and so hopefully see you in the next programs thank you let me also thank you thank you to everyone thank you to all the audience bearing with me and listening to me and thank you so much and yourself thank you thank you