Hope 2021
Video installation, sound, color, (0.02.19),
Poem Parya Vatankhah, Voice Parya Vatankhah,
This is a short video about the destruction the earth and the nature of human-being. Also it interrogates how we are cruel to each other and we suffer when we are not connected to the nature. With these dry and without leaf trees and foggy atmosphere come along with a repetitive music, I hope to give a melancholy aspect to the work which doesn’t help us to see the end of this way just like the pandemic time of Covid-19 since the early 2020s.This work is made for “Hope is Practice” project of Mirna Boyadjian.
Distance 2018
Video installation,three large screens, sound, color, (0.06.43)
The interrogation is about the reality and the dream: Are we really aware of the world we live in and its dimensions (physical and temporal)? How do we travel in time, between our past and our future within our dreams?Distanceis based on a recurring nightmare in which I am lost in endless stairs trying to find a way to escape. This video could refer to a prison, to a lost place, to someone lost between real and unreal. I choose a very simple, uncluttered corridor and stairs with a dark and cold atmosphere to prevent any association of any period or any place. The speed of movement related to running on the stairs as well as the shaking images associated with the dark atmosphere evokes instability, escapism and fear. The sound of difficult breathing emphasizes the anxiety of the scene.
This installation, which consists of two big screens face to face in a dark room, wants to immerse the spectators and make them lose themselves in this dark and unknown world.
Nazanin 2017
Short film, Persian language, stereo sound, color, (0.14.40) Music : Said Tinat
Oniros Film Awards, which is a IMDb qualifying competition, finalist with the film Nazanin
London Feminist Film Festival, with the short film Nazanin, London, England
Nazaninis a short film inspired by the true story of one of my friends who lives in Iran. The video addresses the situation of women in Iran and how they suffer, both from the weight of tradition and also the unbalanced harshness of laws stacked against them. The segmentation of the dialogue in time and space and the confrontation of two points of view accentuate the dramatic tension.
Over the past 4 years I have watched how her life has changed in a bad way, from a free, active and independent woman’s life to that of a woman forcibly married by her family to become a mother imprisoned by her husband. We don’t see the players but just hearing their voices because in reality I was in touch with her only by phone and her disappearance like a fog in the sky these days, make me feeling if she is really existed. It is so horrible feeling because I know that she is suffering somewhere. During our last conversation, she told me that her husband was drugging her and putting medicine directly into what she drinks and eats to keep her asleep all the time. So sad, So dark and dangerous. Far from her, I try in vain to help her, to contact her family. Yet I felt that I had to do something with this sad story, tell it without knowing what happened to her. In Iran, women cannot divorce without the consent of their husbands, and in this case, their child remains in the custody of the husband.
Women must be beautiful; women must be hidden (2017)
Video, black and white, stereo sound, (0.11.01)
In this work I question the situation of women in contemporary Iranian society.
During this performance, in an act of repetition, I put and handed the veil. The pace accelerates gradually, to the point that it becomes a violent and upsetting gesture. This repetitive gesture is a mixture of memories and suffering that have accompanied me since I was seven years old. Every year in Iran, thousands of women are arrested and imprisoned under the pretext of not completely complying with the law on the wearing of the veil.
Today, Iranian women represent more than half of students in university and can thus become doctors, teachers, engineers and researchers, and yet they do not have the same rights (work, divorce, travel, inheritance…) than men whose most emblematic symbol is the mandatory wearing of the hijab.
The first part of the sound is the voice of the female demonstrations in Iran against Hijab demanding equality between women and men, on 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 of March 1979, which is what they had before the Iranian revolution that transformed the country to an Islamic regime.
The second part of the sound at the end of the video is the voice of women screaming because they are arrested on the streets and handcuffed by Islamic Police for not wearing a complete hijab in 2016, more than 38 years after the Iranian Revolution.
Jean-Paul Fargier : “And what about women in this cruel, unjust, apparently unchangeable world? There are many of them, here, to express their revolt, that is enough for them. First of all, they must tirelessly say what oppresses them. One of them, Paryah Vatankhah, tirelessly takes off and puts back on her veil, in a loop that only seeks to be unclasped by the successive insurrections that a soundtrack made of the clamors of demonstrations in Iran against the absolutism of the ayatollahs carries. Women must be beautiful, Women must be hidden: quickly let these veils fall and let the time of free faces come.” Chroniques en movement, Marseille 2018, Turbulences Video, n°102, 2019
The Circle (2016)
Video installation, three screens, in loop, color, stereo sound, (0.11.01)
The Circleoffers a reflection on the perception of the world and life, the path of our existence and the repetition of our daily life as an endless circle. The video represents an endless tunnel next to which is juxtaposed the image of my performance where I turn on myself as in a Sufi dance. When I went into this tunnel, I was fascinated by its length that seemed endless. It reminded me of life, the path we have to go on without knowing where it leads us.
The installation consists of three large-format videos projected into a dark space that puts the viewer in an agonizing and stifling situation, plunging him into an endlessly turning world around him.
Loudness trouble (2015)
Video Installation, three screens, in loop, color, stereo sound (0.03.15)
In the installation Loudness Trouble, I question the influence that historical events can have on our mind. How can the violence of history affect us and our vision of society?
In this work, I integrate images of the important and historical events of contemporary Iran that have touched my mind like those of the Iranian revolution of 1978, the Iran-Iraq war and the 2009 demonstration, to explore their timeless influences and their effects on our life and our perception of the world. How can the violence of history affect us and our vision of society?
The installation consists of three projections on large transparent screens whose parallel layout allows the viewer to walk between them to better immerse themselves in these images in full size.
(Re) actions, 2015
A video by Laurie Joly and Parya Vatankhah, black and white, Stereo Sound, (0.06.42)
Text written by Laurie Joly the night after the attacks of January 7, 2015 in Paris
(RE)ACTIONS is a result of collaboration between me and a French artist, Laurie Joly. Its starting point is in a dialogue. (RE)ACTIONS installs a dialogue between two stories, two cultures and two artistic approaches. It creates a conversation between artistic media – considering all forms of Art. (RE)ACTIONS aims for a dialogue between looks – for a plurality of the sensitive modes of reception. This video is a commitment against the censorships, which continues to impact the creative minds and artists.
Nightmare (2013)
Video installation, two screens, in loop, color, stereo sound, (0.04.10)
In this work, I engaged myself in a process of reappropriation of archive images (media, internet…) associated with images taken myself in a confrontation between two spaces, Iran and France, exploring the question reminiscence. I am interested in the influence of our experience in our perception of the world under the prism of the inner/outer relationship. The complementarity of images and sound helps to reinforce the feeling of anguish and oppression that emerges from this work.
Inevitable (2011)
Video, color, stereo sound, (0.03.08)
In this video, I am interested in the paradoxes and ambiguities between our thoughts and feelings, on the one hand, and the image we refer to another, on what we choose to unveil in society and what remains buried in us. I explore here the notion of the mask and the burial of our feelings under the prism the inner/outer boundary of the private and the public. The metaphorical image of the suffering, symbolized by a bloody body, is gradually revealed to the viewer by the vertical movement of the camera that begins on the radiant face of a young woman as a mask presented to the public opposing her intimate suffering.