Textonpractice

sara's text on practice

what have you been making?

previous nude project currently not working on it

three projects recently

eye project - 4 minute, about iran revolution

I'm made a short film, and my main approach was for non-Iranians to take action about the movement in Iran. I believe everyone in the world can have a normal life because of feminism and the women’s rights movement. Every person that believes in feminism or women's rights could do something about what has been going on in iran. the film is 03:58 minutes. It displays a very normal life of a Rotterdam inhabitant. For instance, people walking down the street or talking to each other or going somewhere with their child. Everything that would remind a Rotterdamer of their life and is familiar to them. It reminds the audience that they have this freedom of a normal life because other people fought for this rights in the past.

in terms of technical decisions, i implemented the use/faking of long lenses with my camera to heighten the sense of distance. i chose to use my personal camera which is sony alpha 7riii to capture the moving images and try to get the best quality out of that. it took a long experiment for me to get over my fears of having a camera in the streets. i wanted the pictures to be beautiful and poetic, not just documentary. the practice of creating such thing was a very good learning point in my artistic path which i was nit used to. the final result came out satisfying to me.

In the end, through a series of questions that audience can/can not relate to, are gonna see how many people died in Iran because of this revolution and basic rights. when at the same time, the inhabitants were just having, for example, their coffee. In the western world, I think we forget to use our privileges. If you believe that men and women are equal and that women can have all the rights to do whatever they want, then you believe in feminism. I'm made this film to remind people that they can actually use this freedom of speech. I think that nobody expects you to care, but if you care and take action on it, you can say that you’re a feminist or believe that everyone should be equal.

photo series - ambiguity -

Ambiguity is a series of street photography, taken in Rotterdam. The photos are black and white, and this stylistic choice is connected to the message i am attempting to convey in the work.

Very much inspired through the texts i read on coloniality/decoloniality in a "is it possible to talk about violence" seminar- I draw a connection between colonialism and totalitarianism and am focused on understanding and fighting back against the removal of meaning that runs rampant today. With totalitarian governments and societies, Both try to impose ideology over people, taking away their individual identity, we see humans be reduced to 'the same', This frustrates, angers but also inspires me to make works that explore and challenge this, as seen in this series.

The timing of a strong fog in the city was a major accelerator for me to grab my camera and hit the streets. The fog has a sort of magical and almost intimidating effect, in my opinion it can be read as violence, and it also tends to make the people it surrounds be engulfed in it, also reflecting this notion of 'the same'.

In terms of technical decisions i made while capturing these candid moments, again, i implemented the use/faking of long lenses to heighten the sense of distance and disconnect. This allowed for a sort of compression of space, something adding to the overwhelming feel of the fog, and the city and it's size- something that was repeatedly on showcase through the use of vertical/portrait format, often highlighting large buildings, light poles, structures etc.

I felt free as a creator while making this series. The documentary, street approach allowed my possibilities that are not always available in my practice where i am often working in controlled and sometimes private portraiture sessions. I would often find a frame i enjoyed in terms of environment and would wait (sometimes long!) for a human to enter the frame and interact or add the final 'element'.

Moving forward, I am interested in continuing this approach, potentially with other mediums like film/analog something i have lots of experience with. Additionally, I would like to explore how i can also evoke other emotions and atmospheric feeling, in different climates and weather, not necessarily just with fog.

still in development - i realized that i need to focus on one of them in order to really understand colonialism.

youtube video series

it is about my personal journey, transformation and life changes from being a depressed unhappy person to being a happy and confident person. i believe telling my story is really important because the environment that people are living in, is made for them to be toxic. the society and the culture of open minded people in the society in really toxic to the point that i could not be myself anymore and had to wear this mask of fakeness all the time, in order to improve my net worth and be succesfull in life. i got bullied and limited so many by the society's toxic rules that i believed that i was the problem and i had to change who i was in order to fit the society. i want to show other people who are living in this situation that i was, that there is nothing wrong with them and can be themselves and yet get appreciation for who they are. it is in farsi now but i am thinking to make translation on it for my non iranian friends who happen to like the series. in terms of technical choices, i use archive footages which i filmed with my iphone that i have from where i was living in iran and the whole story is around that time i was living there. it is 8 to 10 episodes and it is releasing every week on youtube.

the connection between all of the works i did till now is that they all have an underlying layer of political matter as a starting point, i am trying to not be political. i observe a lot, i overthink, i start a project only when it's clear in my head, when i can clearly see it, i try to connect dots in my head together. it works like photoshop in my head. starting with a blank page and adding layers until the whole picture is made in my mind.

my next project is i don know project -

might be an abstract project. this project started from my obsession around the desire of not being a political artist. i found myself in this position of labeling myself a political artist because my whole practice so far has been revolving around political subjects. not that being a political artist is bad, i just know that i am capable of doing more than political and i want to experiment myself out of my history and background as an artist. struggling with labels and being hard on myself, one of my tutors suggested this artist [shiraze houshyari] to me who is an abstract artist and talk about making something out of what you do not know is. making without knowing what are you making. i decided to put all of my political ideas which i find valuable on hold, and try to find value in not knowing. i want to make pure art and i want to play with colors. i know that i want it to be a photography series but i want to experiment with it in film and audio. i am inspired of a ny photographer hasselblad ambassador named: ali faraji who has a photo series called in the dark of day. works with shadows a lot. i am thinking of playing with colors in the city and make abstract photography with colors and shadows. in relation with the ambiguity project maybe?

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