In Anahita Norouzi’s workshop | Seeking head

An artist of Iranian origin living in Montreal for six years, Anahita Norouzi has since made her mark in Canada. Passionate about human rights and the environment, she currently exhibits works at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC), the Nicolas Robert gallery and the Center Jacques-et-Michel-Auger in Victoriaville. We met her in her workshop in the Chabanel district.

From Tehran to Montreal

When she was young, Anahita played the piano and saxophone and sang in a choir. The daughter of a teacher and a soldier, she studied engineering before opting for the visual arts, after being moved by the paintings of Francis Bacon at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran. “I realized then that you could evoke something indirectly, with a metaphor,” she says. Particularly the subject of violence. »

Passionate about photography, experimental cinema and conceptual art, she came to study at Concordia in 2010. In her free time, she photographed the streets of the metropolis. “I was alone, far from home. The streets are a special space. Both common and isolated. It was a work on melancholy with a device that my father used when he was young. »

With a master’s degree in hand, she returned to Tehran in 2013. “In the following years, I read a lot, did fashion photography and taught at university. » In 2018, she returned to Montreal where she began a period of intensive creation. In six years, she has produced 25 bodies of work! A frenzy that reveals his temperament. “I compensated for the years during which I did not create. I wanted to work and research a lot. I love research. »

Its themes

In 2010, she left Iran, then shaken by demonstrations harshly repressed by the Islamic regime. This violence is imprinted in his work. In 2012, she filmed herself sacrificing a sheep to talk about sacrificed citizens. Tehran, The Apocalypse is a committed and disturbing video which also speaks about our hypocrisy in relation to violence. “If you eat steak, I don’t think you can talk morals or ethics about this work,” she says. In 2010, I saw young soldiers killing students of the same age. I didn’t understand that this could be possible. I then read a lot about the history of fascism, Nazism and authoritarian systems. »

From these readings will result, in 2018, two other videos on violence. In Iran, in Nazi Germany, in the United States and in Canada with the denounced psychiatric experiments of the D^r Donald Ewen Cameron, carried out between 1957 and 1964 at McGill University as part of a CIA project. These two works are A Space in Betweena performance presented in Berlin, and Flesh Memorytour in Iran.

Alongside the theme of human rights, Anahita is passionate about citizenship and environmental issues. In 2013, she filmed herself planting 100 cypress trees on a mythical mountain in Iran, Mount Damavand. His video One Hundred Cypresses speaks of endurance, despair, landscape, determination to change a reality, but also hope and peace.

Watch the video One Hundred Cypresses (in English)

Exhibitions

Migration is at the heart of his latest bodies of work. After presenting, at the Grantham Foundation in 2022, his installation Troubled garden on the journey of plants from one continent to another, Anahita is taking advantage of her new notoriety (last year, she was a finalist for the Sobey prize and winner of the contemporary art prize from the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec) to present two new versions of his creations.

Read the review of Troubled garden

In the temporary spaces of the MAC (Place Ville Marie), it is part of the deployment until August 18 women volcanoes forests torrents concocted by curator Marie-Ève ​​Beaupré. Nine artists evoke their relationships with the landscapes of life. She exhibits an aerial version of Constellational Diasporas, presented, on the ground, to the Grantham Foundation: 350 seeds ofHeracleum persicum trapped in glass balls. Seeds brought from Iran by his mother. A work which also talks about customs controls on the living world, whether humans or plants. “How do we decide what passes and what doesn’t,” she said. My mother was able to come to Montreal with these seeds, because they are also spices. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to. »

Visit the MAC exhibition page

At the Jacques-et-Michel-Auger Center, curator Ariane Plante presents elements from two Anahita corpora. A fluid and nourishing deployment on migration and the presence of the British in Iran because of oil from 1901.

The question of botanical migration interested the population of Victoriaville, according to Dominique Laquerre, director of the center. “When we talk about weeds, Persian hogweed, in particular, people in the agricultural sector know this reality. The exhibition fascinated them, because it shows the contrast between protection of diversity and eradication of unwanted weeds which are at the same time ornamental plants. »

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Consult the page of the exhibition in Victoriaville

Projects

Ironically, this artist who is passionate about migration is currently limited in her travels. She is awaiting her Canadian citizenship to accept the invitation to reside at MOSS MOCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Massachusetts. She also needs a Canadian passport to go and present a solo show in September at the Armory Fair in New York. “I am preparing the works, but I don’t know if I will be able to go to the opening. The United States does not allow entry with an Iranian passport. »

While waiting for this to be resolved, she is working on the creation and research project Creases from the UQAM Gallery. “The artists’ creations will be presented simultaneously in four university galleries in Quebec, starting in September. My research focuses on the blue poppy and the Chinese community. And I recently did a residency at the Jardins de Métis. »

In November, she will release a book of photographs taken from 2006 to 2009 which evoke her relations with Iran. She will also create a work commissioned by the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec by December. She is working on a film project for which she received a grant and will film outside of Canada. And she will do a residency in Paris next year and, the same year, will have an exhibition in Norway.

Anahita Norouzi likes to create in Montreal. “It’s a unique city in Canada. It has a lot of textures. Everyone feels like they belong to this city. It’s different in Toronto. This is my home. I like to create there with intuition that I nourish with my research. For me, being an artist means telling stories with visuals and beauty, while trying to understand the world in which we live. »

Visit the artist’s website

Creations

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