Ich habe Knast
Farkhondeh Shahroudi
Speaking to Ancestors 1/7
11.09 to 18.09.2023
Spittelmarkt-Berlin
As the prelude to the exhibition series Speaking to Ancestors, the Iranian artist Farkhondeh Shahroudi presents her show Ich habe Knast with a series of social art interventions at Spittelmarkt, Berlin. The exhibition opens with her performance sang zani (2022), in which the public and residents from the neighbourhood are invited to knock two stones at each other to given rhythms. sang zani is a performative adaptation of the Shiite mourning ceremony “daste gardani” and the tradition of the Iranian theatre “Tazieh”, in which the boundaries between audience and performers, stage and auditorium break down and blur into constantly changing forms.
At the same location the artist will also presents her new work Gülüzar (Persian for flower meadow), a caravan covered with fragments of Persian carpets. This mobile garden creates a place for those who wish to be or are forced to be transient settlers. This is a heterotopian place, a fantasy that is real and operational during the course of the exhibition period, functioning as a soup kitchen for the hungry and those in need. With Gülüzar, Shahroudi refers to the history of Spittelmarkt as a quarter for wayfarers and craftsmen. The former “Siechenhaus,” established for the poor and sick, later became the “Gertraudenhospital.”
Next to the installation, Farkhondeh Shahroudi also places an Anti-flag as a symbol against ideology, belonging and territorial segregation. The exhibition’s title Ich habe Knast (I have Jail) is a slang expression that was common in East Germany; it meant “I am hungry.” The artist transforms her personal story—that of a political asylum seeker in the 1990s in Germany— and opens a space for the stories of those oppressed by others to create a collective space of remembrance. Ich habe Knast combines installation, performance and sound with the art of storytelling from Shiite rituals to create a social sculpture that oscillates between “dream”(in german: Traum) and “trauma”.
The exhibition „Ich habe Knast“ by Farkhondeh Shahroudi takes place within the framework of the exhibition series Speaking to Ancestors curated by Keumhwa Kim and Pauline Doutreluingne. The two-year programme series (2022-23) forms a narrative of seven sequential artistic positions whose work engages with genealogies and (image)practices. Between faded myths and traditional imagination, the artists create performative spaces of intervention and communication. Inspired by the traditions of ritual practices, they develop new forms to heal wounds in our global society and to allow forgotten stories of marginalised groups to resurrect.
Co-curated with Pauline Doutreluingne
More Information about Speaking to Ancestors
