In which empty space are you standing at Silk Road Gallery

In which empty space are you standing

In which empty space are you standing
(Confidence #7)
by Ali Ettehad
Digital print on metalized paper/ Music by Kaveh Kateb/ Texts selected by Masud Shahriari/2010
Click here to see some images from the exhibition.

“The Oracle declares I see visions flowing from quills which soon after shall be impressed upon their land, and quills that recreate these visions yet again. I hear voices uttered by storytellers speaking of a story that shall come to pass, and the same event to be retold yet again by subsequent storytellers.

I see people orbiting themselves [endlessly] from the beginning to the end.”

Armatian, Chapter III , Verse xii and xiii

“In which empty space are you standing” is created by reproducing selective Negarehs. These Negarehs are selected from different ages of Persian paintings; and the faces of figures are deleted. There are parts of contemporary Iranian novels and stories substituted instead of the original texts. These replaced texts are somehow related to the Negarehs and in the other hand are connected to social history of Iran –during the artist’s lifetime. The subject could be the war between Iran and Iraq, the riots inDaneshgah Street, serial murders of intellectuals in Iran and lots of other stories. Just like “Purdahs of silence” this series asks the audience to put themselves in the place of characters in the Negarehs by their own choice: the one who kills; and the one who is being murdered; the torturer and the tormented; the executer and the one who is being executed….