Since September 2022 people in Iran have been protesting for regime change, democracy,
freedom, equality and human rights. This protest movement, initially started by women and girls at the risk of their lives,
expanded into a feminist-intersectional revolution. People from different marginalized groups joined together and collectively
try to establish democracy and equality in Iran. They build a union of diversity, similar to the Simorgh in Farid Al-Din Attar’s
Conference of the Birds (written in the 12th century). From a transhistorical as well as transcultural perspective,
the project aims to highlight the significance of this epic for today and to explore the role of art and literature in the
struggle for equality rights.
We warmly invite you to participate in our events where
artists present their work and discuss with us the afterlife of the Conference of the Birds.
On
Thursday 16.11.2023 the kick-off event of the INTRA-Project “Valleys of the Simorgh” will take place within the framework
of the Vienna Art Week 2023 at hinterland.
We will start at 6pm with the lecture performance “Wandering
Images” by Farkhondeh Shahroudi and at 7pm the exhibition “Flight of the Birds” will be opened.
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Farkhondeh Shahroudi
November, 16 2023 6pm@hinterland
Wandering
Images
In a lecture performance, the multimedia artist Farkhondeh Shahroudi gives
us an insight into her artistic work. In her oeuvre, the migration of materials, images, metaphors, ideas and narratives plays
a central role. At the same time, these migrations are always accompanied by a process of translation, which is reflected
in language (Farsi/German), text and image. How does a change of place, a change of language, a change of material transform
what is represented, what is narrated? Everything is in motion, even the two-dimensional written text, which detaches itself
from the carrier medium and is transformed into spatially sculptural forms, or when the ink is replaced by threads and wanders
out of Shahroudi’s textile books into the space of reception and becomes tactile. These dynamics of overcoming spatial, temporal
and pictorial boundaries are the subject of Shahroudi’s lecture performance and the fitting prelude to our project, which
is also dedicated to the dynamics of movement and makes temporal persistence, spatial migration and language-image transformation
the focus of investigation.
ABOUT
Farkhondeh Shahroudi, born 1962
in Tehran, has been living and working in Berlin since 2001. She has constructed her artistic research through multiple expressive
media – painting and sculpture, drawing, installation, video and performance – contaminated and attracted by the force of
poetry. She studied Art at Al-Zahra University in Tehran from 1985 until 1990, when she moved to Germany and studied at the
Art and Design College in Dortmund. Her work has been exhibited in Germany, Italy and Estonia, including the installation
‘Guard’, shown at the Pergamon Museum, Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin (2005). In 2022 she was awarded the Hannah-Höch-Förderpreis,
and in 2023 the Exile Visual Arts Award from the Körber Stiftung, supported by the Stiftung Exilmuseum Berlin.
This research project is partially funded by the University of Applied Arts.
