Chichast Series | 2013
April-May 2013 | Mottahedan Projects | Dubai/UAE
October 2015 | Etemad Gallery | Tehran/Iran
Chichast, a series by Iranian artist Neda Zarfsaz derives its title from the ancient name for Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran. Translated as ‘glittering’, Chichast references to the lake’s salt deposits. For centuries, the lake has played a role in the Iranian consciousness, weaving through myths and legends as a trope and containing shore-side mud that is attributed with healing powers. In recent years, drought and over-irrigation have caused depletion of its waters and threatened wildlife.
This series depicts photographs of the artist dumping bottomless buckets of water into the lake in attempt to reverse that trend as well as landscape photographs displayed in glass boxes containing salt. The artist appears as an individual confronted with realities larger than herself as she futilely attempts to resuscitate life. Nonetheless, Zarfsaz’s initiative demands that humans be held responsibile to the environment and other species in the global community. The salt-filled cases, by which the works resemble hourglasses, maintain the immediacy of time and the pressures of acting against the clock—i.e., before death overtakes life.
The force of these works lies in their conceptual simplicity: they are just as they are staged. In a return to premodern concerns, the works suggest the priority of object over form as material (i.e., water)—not its presentation—constitutes the works’ primary meaning. Collapsing art and action, Zarfsaz’s performances combine works of art with the less romantic work of physical labour and fulfilling a duty.
http://mottahedan.com/exhibitions/from-outside-or-otherwise
Empty gestures among the solitudes
A friendly review on “From outside or otherwise” a video performance by Neda Zarfsaz
By artist Anders Hammarstrand
www.andershammarstrand.com
It is obvious that she is criticizing the exploitation of this lake and the surrounding nature, but at the same time her pictures are filled with so much imagination so I think it opens up for a lot of different interpretations. She is out there in the dessert (I suppose it is she) with a lot of blue buckets trying to throw something into the lake? The buckets are blue, it could be water or a symbol of water; She is a desperate environmentalist trying to throw water back into the lake? That is of course a quite rational interpretation and I would prefer to be a bit more poetic in my approach.
The landscape at the first photo from her video looks almost surrealistic with a big emptiness that reminds me of some paintings by Yves Tanguy, in the next photo she is throwing something from the bucket in to the air, the whole thing looks like a performance or some kind of rite, what comes into my mind when I look at these pictures are the famous lines by the french poet Apollinaire “J´ai fait les gestes blanc parmi les solitudes” (I have made empty gestures among the solitudes), an absurd way to try to transcend the limits of creativity. The buckets are blue, but it is a very special blue, in fact it looks very close to IKB; International Klein Blue. For Yves Klein the famous painter of blue monochromes, blue was the colour of the void or the absolute. The landscape in picture is very white and it looks very empty. Maybe any colour could be used to depict emptiness but usually white (or black) and blue are the colours used to describe the void. Fore Malevitch white was the colour of the concept of infinity. Maybe she is out there as a crazy poet or some kind of modern alchemist trying to transcend the predicament of the artist. What if it is the salt that she is throwing around! in alchemical literature salt is associated with Hermes the messenger of the Gods, maybe she is seeking a connection with some divine power to save this magnificent lake.