Gav- Khouni

Sahar Askary Hemmat

My family moved a lot during my childhood. As an introverted child, whenever we moved to a new city I found myself more and more alone. I had to work harder to fit into my new community and to develop a friendship. No matter where we were living in, during the holidays, we would go back to Esfahan, the city where I was born. As I always found it hard to answer the question of which city I am from, I tried to form a place-attachment to Esfahan. However, the city that I used to identify with, itself was struggling for its identity as one of its most important landmarks was disappearing. This landmark is a river called Zayandeh Rud which as its name suggests, it used to give life to the city and its residents. Nevertheless, almost 20 years ago decisions were made to direct its water to some of its neighbour cities that were suffering from lack of drinking water sources and this has left residents of Esfahan to enjoy the flow of the river for not more than one or two months in a year. In Gav-Khouni, I attempt to use these two stories of obliged dislocations, to explore the relationship between place-attachment and the formation of identity. I use my family archive, memories of my childhood and footage that I took of the river and its riverbed to explore this relationship through an immersive installation work.

This virtual_exhibition is empty