«a» (2015)

This installation includes an unsettling and anomic 8’x4’x10’ (LWH) space. The walls are covered with a large 8’ x 14’ digital print with a single shelf that holds a book title, “The Severed Head” by Julia Kristeva in which she investigates the idea of human body as an integrated medium comprises the consciousness and the identity of the self. The printed contents of the book has been concealed with thin red masking tape, leaving only the word “head” exposed through out the whole book.

The flooring piece includes 152 kiln bricks positioned in a 4’x10’ grid. The surface of the bricks are covered with handwritten text which is the Farsi translation of the book “Against Interpretation” by Susan Sontag. The fragile bricks fall apart by the movement of the audience in the space.

This work appears as an obscure lexicon, consisting of several indexes referring to destruction and subtraction. Each piece in this installation negates the presentation of itself as a pre-defined medium. There are texts that are impotent in conveying their intended message; diminished books that are incapable of structuring a common narrative; destructed prints that are depleted from the iconic value of an image; and bodies that are unable to introduce the real identity of individuals. This anomic space offers the possibility of relocating the meaning from both within the text, and from the intentionality of the author to the contingencies of the reception and spontaneity of interaction.