7Sin* 2023 – Reimagined

Sib.Apple: Symbol of Beauty
Finding narrations that write and tell people into existence, who are not represented enough, is like a necessary act of resistance and joy for me. The warriors and survivors, goddesses, healers, tomboys, ladyboys, hijra, kathoeys, khunthas and nádleehi. To write dreams and visions into artistic practice, which are not only one’s own, but also collective dreams. Remembering them who painted us on cave walls, weaved us into carpets, wished for us and saw us coming. To overwrite patriarchal storytelling and creating archives of those whom I do not have before me, yet can already feel.

Senjed.Dried Oleaster: Symbol of Love
For me, it is to become silent and still, and then to be a vessel for stories that want to be told. It is allowing my first language to flow through German or English accepting that something will be always lost in translation: languages are not equally sensual. Farsi often carries me intuitively through my artistic practice. It intervenes in the rhythm of my film editing, in word choice for a text, script or voiceover.

Ketab.Book: Symbol of Wisdom
If I can touch my soul, and if that allows others to touch theirs and then to transform, something crucial has quite worked. And if what is created then also becomes timeless in a way, then it has spoken to all times.

Seer.Garlic.: Symbol of Health & Medicine
The 1979 and the following years after the Revolution in Iran left many people in despair. The joyful hopes of a system change – the dismantle of the outdated westernized aristocratic structures that reinforced class inequality – burned to ashes. A dense cloud of smoke stretched over the country and swallowed what was left of human rights, freedom, and dreams for equality. Political prosecutions, a feeling of stagnation and on-going war forced many to leave. Not being able to return and experiencing pressures in exile, left wounds in the first and second generations of Iranian migrants. However, each migration has its own alchemy: people integrated, adapted, recycled, and reshaped what they already knew with what they got in touch with.
The unconscious need for healing inter-generational wounds, building bridges between complexities and contradictions as well as a desire to be an alchemist have accompanied my artistic work.

Samanu.Weatpaste: Symbol of Power & Strength
As a child and teenager, growing up in social housings in the 1980s/90s West-Berlin, I didn’t feature in its film landscape, or literature. At that time, there were no (queer) Brown or Black kids or teens on West German television with whom I could connect. Shows with non-white leading roles such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, or Arabian Nights: Sinbad’s Adventures, were rare options. None of them were German productions. I didn’t appear in Iranian stories or films either.
The non-occurrence in these cultural landscapes affirmed my desire to become a storyteller.

Somagh.Sumac.: Symbol of Sunrise
This desire was the fire that warms and drives me. I longed for stories and forms of storytelling that had the power to challenge what was hidden or overwritten: speculative fabulation, hybrid forms of fictional-documentaries, science fiction stories. As a consequence, I lean(ed) opening space for alternative representation and giving queer Black and Brown people main roles in my films.

Serkeh.Vinegar.: Symbol of Patience
When I was called into this world, my parents’ joy at the birth of my sister and me was overshadowed by external events. Although they held us, we fell, now and then. Even though we were physically far away, yet parts of me were intertwined with their lost homeland.
The murder of Jina Mahsa Amini in September 2022 ignited a revolutionary uprising carried by Kurds, women, LGBTIQ, workers, students and large segments of the population. Spellbound we have followed the news and videos that reported on protests in Iran. My heart balances between feelings of hope about the regime overthrow, moved by blatant courage of the young and old, deep sadness that so many people have to give their lives in this struggle.

Sabzeh.Sprouting Herbs: Symbol of Rebirth
Even though I may not live to see the end of dictatorship and system’s change, I dream this hope into existence. I imagine and tell this vision into reality for those who come after me. When you breathe life into a vision or imagination it materializes, it becomes matter.

Sham.Candle: Symbol of Enlightement & Fire
It’s time to create more stories, characters and narrative strands that give inspiration and allow self-recognition. We had enough stories which fell into polarizing and binary traps of “we-them” / “good-evil” and outdated hero’s journeys. Populist neo-fascist conservative beliefs will fuel and not withstand the tensions and crises that we are and will encounter.

Ayneh.Mirror: Symbol of Self-Reflection
What will happen, shift and move in a society if we could engage with stories that offer us unfamiliar worlds, familiar feelings, and new perspectives? What aesthetic strategies could emerge? What social and political change would that initiate?

Mahi.Fish: Symbol of Progress
In my collaborative practice as a visual storyteller I crave for narratives that make audiences think, feel and tell a story along and together with me. Stories that surprise and give audacity.
Our stories are needed to open up new potentialities for connections and touch, spaces of thinking, dialogues and conversations where we get a chance to engage and interact sincerely with each other in times of crisis.

* Haftsin (Farsi: هفت‌سین), is a ritual for Norouz [meaning: the new day], where at least seven symbols are arranged on the New Year’s table. Each one of them has a specific meaning. The celebration of the New Year on the day of the vernal equinox, marking the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, is a celebration rooted in polytheism times when people in that region believed in many deities, goddesses and gods.

Text: Zara Zandieh (www.zarazandieh.com)
Illustration: Sunny Sanaz Shokrae (https://www.sunnyshokrae.com/) & Sepideh Shahabi¹

¹ For more in-depth information about the collage follow this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WWX1V9OXcuA2gO2lgX6d2uz4W7OEY7_L/view