WHAT'S PAST IS (NOT) PROLOGUE
In What’s Past Is (Not) Prologue, carried out between 2016 and 2023, Shirin Salehi (Tehran, 1982) delves into the poetics of void exploring the tension between the desire to remember and the right to forget in relation to the wrenching grief experienced in her home country. Amidst the current image neurosis –do our tired eyes still see?–, Salehi confronts the vulnerability of what is exposed, the failure of language in the face of the pain of the loved ones. The installation presents a series of 18 prints of erased drawings and a video derived from old family photographs. In both pieces, the dense emptiness is translated into language –material and immaterial– of a suffocating historical time.
Salehi takes her own drawings and correspondences as raw material. A series of preparatory sketches for new sculptures, originated following a traumatic incident for her family in 2016, questions the profanation that is carried out from the images of pain. She erases the sketches of these sculptures, one by one, leaving only handwritten notes, some legible, some illegible, containing thoughts and emotions that had driven her to work on the pieces. Through erasure, as a poetic gesture, she redefines the image and invites us to think about the complex space that speaking of one's own pain entails. The void, common in all the drawings, constitutes an image that is the trace of another. This visual emptiness offers a delicate response for these memories, shielding them from sensationalism and profanity.
The 12:30-minute projection gathers the edited transcriptions and translations of voice messages received from Tehran during the autumn protests of 2022 after sharing some old family photos with a beloved family member. These images, hidden within the video, stirred up memories of incidents that unfolded around the house during and after the 1979 Revolution. By deactivating the presence of the images and, in doing so, the associated imagery, Salehi creates a new space for listening without the visual imperative, with the desire to foster a deeper conversation with those who stand before the black screen.
The poem that opens the exhibition is part of an artist’s book that FUGA gallery will present in 2024.
c/Lluís el Piadós, 3
08003, Barcelona
Tuesday to Friday. 11:00–19:00 h
Saturday. 11:00–14:00 h
c/Lluís el Piadós, 3
08003, Barcelona
Tuesday to Friday. 11:00–19:00 h
Saturday. 11:00–14:00 h