Golrokh Nafisi, An Equivalence of Our Distance, 2021, mixed media
Golrokh Nafisi (b. 1981, Isfahan, Iran) is an illustrator, animator, writer, and contemporary artist based between Amsterdam and Tehran. Golrokh has studied at the Art University of Tehran in Iran and at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in the Netherlands. She has frequently exhibited her work in galleries, as interventions and performances, and at film festivals, among which Art Rotterdam in the Netherlands, MACRO in Italy, and the Beirut Art Center in Lebanon.
An Equivalence of Our Distance is a project by Golrokh Nafisi, done in collaboration with Ahmadali Kadivar, Ahmad Jafari, Maral Ashgevari, Parastou Sadeghi and Setareh Arashoo and Ehsan Abdifar. In this project, 100 letters were sent to the friends, relatives and acquaintances of the organizing team. The letter described how much we missed their hugs, which had been withheld for a year due to COVID. The addressees were asked to send us an item of clothing that was old, worn out, and had seen its last days in their closet.
Read more in Golrokh Nafisi’s essay Celebration of Distant Bodies.
A specimen-style diagram on flower assemblage in preparation for ‘rooting’ delves into the topics of how to re-assemble oneself to set roots somewhere. Do we change ourselves and re-assemble our features to be allowed to remain in the garden, or do we tend a small corner in a garden of our own? Often ‘belonging’ is a concept that exists within change. We can belong to many contradictory concepts, not necessarily following a specific blueprint.
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The Finding of Hän is an original puppet theater production that explores the inherent duality of human nature and imagines the lifespan of an ancient object. Themes and characters are drawn from coastal cultures and stories from around the world.
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