May 22

May 22 Photo Journal Monday: Paria Ahmadi

@ Paria Ahmadi. “Mama_s blue dress”, 2022

Images and text by Paria Ahmadi

I am a female Iranian artist based in New York. My current practice focuses on the politics of memory and archive, the poetic relations of history, image and objects, and the aesthetics of everyday Iranian life. I work primarily with installation, photography, video, and printmaking.

Art for me is a dialogue, an exchange of ideas, feelings and time. I grew up in a time and space that ideological borders control what you see, what you know, and most importantly what you can imagine and I find myself always trying to cross that border.

I am very interested in how the data of images transforms into different materials and what the materiality of it activates. My politics lead me to the materials I work with and the images I choose for this purpose.

I try to tell borderless stories, making it possible to imagine a voice for the voiceless.

In this series, I have silkscreened images of my family archive on back of the rug samples. They hold the story and the memories from worker class Iranian life on the unseen part of the rug. How can a rug exist without its ground? Here, the family memories is the ground.