Curated by Amirali Ghasemi

First presented as Part of Me: mise en abyme, a video program curated by Amirali Ghasemi and Sandra Skurvida at IRANIAN ARTS NOW festival and exhibition, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, 25 June – 24 July, 2012.

Featuring works by Mohammad Abbasi, Erfan Abdi, Makan Ashgvari, Ghazaleh Bahiraie, Amir Bastan, Pouya Ehsaei, Golnaz Esmaili, Bahar Fattahi, Arvin H. Kamal, Tala Madani, Mahan Moalemi, Amirali Mohebbinejad, Photomat, Bita Razavi & Jaakko Karhunen, Sona Safaei, Mohsen Saghafi, Ali Samadpour, Mamali Shafahi, Melika Shafahi, Melodie Zad, Zoha Zokaei, and Niloufar Zolfaghari.   

Part of me is performance. Part of me is poetry. Part of me is pain; the pain that doesn’t have visible symptoms.

While promises of diversity and democracy manifest superficially, demassification has become a trending strategy in advertising and social networking. Furthermore, art institutions and ads mediate and manipulate the flow of art information. How is it possible, first, to navigate in these massive clusters of artifacts, and, second, to be protected from corporate profiting?

Working within quotations of “national representation” in many ways is similar to an advertising campaign tailored for a city and it tends to reach a specific group of people based on their expectations and needs. Curator’s part might be to deliver nothing spectacular, but something delicate enough to be rendered in this highly turbulent mode we live in.

There are things, which can’t be said loud, no manifesto can handle the lightweight of the message. The message can’t be broadcasted nor encoded to be safe; and sound is the void…

Part of me is silent. Part of me struggles with the self, yet it is not obsessed with identity. Part of me is re–discovery of the body, even though it has evolved beyond that line.

Part of me is young.

                                                                                                  – Amirali Ghasemi