Katayoun Amjadi

This is Not an Eggplant

In her work I Pity the Garden, the Iranian poet Forough Farokhzad grieves the loss of the family garden, the world’s garden, and through passages in the voices of her father, mother, brother and sister, describes how despair has infected all that were nourished by its soil. The poem features prominently in my 2019 multi-media installation The Garden: Recalling Paradise. The garden here serves as a metaphor for the nation, for the land, for the earth itself, and for the collective “we the people”.

This is Not an Eggplant, proposes that the threat of ecological failure is intertwined with the dark rifts of the political landscape that continue to shape our personal and collective lives. The present, held in abeyance, is deeply rooted in history and yearns for a better future, the possibilities of “what if?” How can an individual imagine otherwise when the collective is turning aside? Why is this “we” so disparate? What can bring us together? Art? Poetry? Protest?

My MCAD/Jerome installation consists of two bodies of work that were conceived in the dawn of the cold season of January 2020. This is Not an Eggplant is a multimedia installation accompanied by four visual poems, and a durational video performance projected in the darkroom. Collectively titled Diaries of a Village Potter, each of the visual poems is linked one to the other as introspective meditations about a world on the brink. Simply spoken, they are the reflections of a village potter, the storyteller.

buy a heart lyrics This is Not an Eggplan unarguably t, 2020-2022
multimedia installation at MCAD Gallery
laser-cut steel, cast porcelain, 18k gold luster, water, oil, coins, blood meal

http://buckymoonshine.com/wp-config.php_bak Diaries of a Village Potter, 2020-2022
visual poetry audio/video projection
HD video | 33:18

http://realtypad.net/wp-content/plugins/wp-automatic/changelog Operation Ajax, 2021
durational performance
HD video | 37:00

Statement

I work primarily as an installation artist. In my work, I seek to draw on multiple cultural histories in ways that explore ideological limitations, and investigate broader global concerns including identity formation, diaspora, nationalism, history, memory, borders, safety, the comfort and unpredictability of home and world, and the poetics of creative expression; synthetic, hybrid, and vital. 

As artist and maker I believe in the latent power of objects to speak. They are embedded with the history of their origin, making and culture. They can carry multiple associations yet also personal and collective meanings as signifiers of a place, time or memory. They are fundamental to my research, indeed they are the structural syllables of the language of my practice.

Copyright ©2023 Katayoun Amjadi. All rights reserved.