Zahra Moein (IR), Afrang Nordlöf Malekian (IR/SE)
Dispersive movements
3-26 March 2023
Galleri CC, Malmö, Sweden
Opening:
Friday 3 March: 17.00 – 21.00
Performance:
Friday 3/3 19.00 Zahra Moein – notes on vulnerability and braveness
Artist talk:
Saturday 4 March: 14.00
With Zahra Moein and Afrang Nordlöf Malekian
Curator: Bahareh Mirhadinezhadfard (IR/SE), Maria Norrman (SE)
The exhibition Dispersive movements show the ambiguity of dispersion through memories and forgetting, notions of authenticity in the present, and the power of recall.
Memories of images and sounds; first-hand testimonies or cascades of mediations, stories told, copied cassette and video tapes, poignant images. Partly the depleting, where each mediation and recollection adds new layers of meaning, partly dispersion as an enabling force: magnetic fireplaces visible from afar, lingering warmth from the unification of the mehmooni (a social gathering by invitation to someone’s home, e.g., dinner, dance party, celebration, etc.) through music and dance, where low frequencies travel through concrete walls and high-frequency images bear witness to a non-binary, agile and more sonorous economy.
When I cut open a pomegranate, I am unsure of the difference in truth between having experienced something there and then versus having heard about it from afar. Memory is not the truth-bearing link between ourselves and what we have been through, done, or been affected by in the past. To remember is to create detours and perhaps memory is what we want to remember while history reminds us of everything else; the need to remember and to be deprived of one’s memory, of warm memories, cold looks, and forgetfulness as enigmatic enablers.
Text: Bahareh Mirhadinezhadfard, Maria Norrman
𝐆𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐢 𝐂𝐂 proudly presents the exhibition Dispersive movements with Zahra Moein and Afrang Nordlöf Malekian.
Afrang Nordlöf Malekian’s performance Keeping Up with the Iranians emerges from the music history of Iran pre-revolution by reconstructing a mehmooni (a social gathering by invitation to someone’s home, e.g., dinner, dance party, celebration, etc.)
Three handheld video cameras were handed out to the audience, who could film the performance as they pleased.
Listening to Images shows portraits of banned pre-revolutionary (1979) Iranian and Arab singers. The posters speak of music’s complex role in Iranian history—sometimes forbidden, yet always desired. Music threatens oppressive regimes since it is a key to altered states of being. It makes the “impossible” or “improbable” viable.
Listening to Images aspires to find what canceled futurities Iranian and Arabic music vibrates into life again.
In Nordlöf Malekian’s and Cypriot artist Iliada Charalambous’s performance, The Taste of Pomegranate, participants were invited to prepare pomegranate syrup on top of a pomegranate-illustrated tablecloth with printed stories about this precious fruit. At Galleri CC, this tablecloth is displayed, carrying its stains and stories as a testimony of what was once lived, loved, and digested.
Zahra Moein – notes on vulnerability and braveness
Sometimes the last tool you have is your memory. The last way of resistance. You were the witness and all you can do now is try to remember, trying to tell people to fight against amnesia. Sometimes your identity is your memory. After a while, the time gets new meaning for you. Past now and future. The past will cover all of it. The new version of the past. Past with a new narrative. Ahh narrative, it’s all about that. Right? How you are going to tell the story. Which story are people going to remember?
The work notes on vulnerability and braveness is a glance of my life since I left Iran and it is inspired by the work of Chantal Akerman.
The video Viewer and the view is a self-portrait in 4 sections about everyday life in urban areas in Isfahan Iran in 2016. The primary idea revolves around the Gaze and the relation of self.
Afrang Nordlöf Malekian (1995) is an artist whose practice concerns history’s hidden actors and makers. He puts historicity into use as a form of documentation and aspiration that calls for improbable and impossible futurities. His practice examines how narratives, hierarchies, systems, and language disappear, return, and transform in the most unexpected ways; the bootleg culture of Tehrangeles’ music, the non-binary South-West Asian beauty standards, or the Chilean and Iranian leftist movements forced to organize in exile.
Nordlöf Malekian has previously conducted artistic research at the Arab Image Foundation, Beirut, and been a resident at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. He has shown at the 10th Berlin Biennale, Moderna Museet, Tensta Konsthall, IASPIS, Tegel, Botkyrka Konsthall, Page Not Found, Norbergfestival, Marabouparken, Nuda, Pina. Nordlöf Malekian’s work is in public collections, including Moderna Museet, Public Art Agency Sweden, Arab Image Foundation Library, and Botkyrka konsthall.
Zahra Moein was born 1993 in Iran. She draws inspiration from everyday experiences that shape her life, and brings it into her artistic practice. She works mostly with two main mediums: photography and video. In between photographic and cinematographic images, she sees the inclusion of her daily life, memories, and struggles and takes them into her artistic expression as a form of resistance and a source of purpose. In recent years, she has placed a strong emphasis on incorporating text into her artwork. She sees writing as a powerful and timeless feminist tool with the ability to offer an emancipatory approach to expression. Through the use of poetic language, she found a way to connect her written words to her photographs and videos, ultimately creating a more unified and impactful piece. Her artistic approach focuses heavily on narrative, intending to become the narrator of her life and assert agency over her own body.
From 2021-2022, Moein was a residency artist at IASPIS in Stockholm, where she developed her performance notes on vulnerability and braveness.
The exhibition is supported by Malmö Stad and Kulturrådet