FOAD SeyedMohammadi

  Made by an Immigrant Newspapers have been a constant presence throughout my life. As a child, I often saw my family wrap fragile glassware in newsprint before moving house. I would also watch as my father polished the glass of the display cases in his stationery shop with crumpled sheets – proof that paper could clean just as well as it could inform. I recall seeing a goat chew on discarded articles outside a mosque, as if the paper were some decadent treat. And at the market, I frequently bought herbs wrapped in newspaper headlines — George Bush, Saddam, Rafsanjani — their faces discarded once the greens were washed. Later, as a student living on my own, I would spread newspapers across my dining table: a disposable tablecloth for meals that didn’t need to be washed, just discarded and replaced. These fleeting encounters revealed the duality of newsprint: it could preserve and protect, but also distort and disappear. I learned that value is diminished when something is stripped ...

  HASHTI  It’s a playable installation that people can touch and play with them according to the instructions. Each octagon made from the mat and some of them have a photo pattern of some famous battlefield in the world. The tiles are the symbol of lands and the abstraction photos on some tiles are the symbol of an extinct documentary. The abstraction photos point to extinct documentary photography and also it shows manipulated photos are much acceptable by galleries. The geometry is a metaphor for logic and the octagon shapes are a symbol of communication places in middle eastern houses. This is a metaphor for modern battle, I a, trying to make some questions for the viewers, and I’d like to remind them what we lost by technologies. "Hashti" exhibits mixing performance, sculpture, and interactive installation with touches of Kurd and Persian was cited by some as an "a powerful and disturbing installation that poses urgent questions of our time and pushes the spectator i...

Tangible things Tangible things invite readers to look closely at the world around them—ordinary objects like the food on their plate, and abstract elements like safety pins attached to leaves. Through human-centric ideas, we assign meaning to everything. In a world obsessed with the virtual, tangible things are once again making history—with humans at the center of it. This work suggests that almost any material object, when examined closely, can serve as a link between the present and the past. As meaning-making machines, humans constantly reinterpret the world around them. In this collection—like in some of my other works—I attempt to translate photographs into sculpture, preserving documentation through memory. I aim to create a historical memory of forgotten regions. I'm especially interested in how images are translated across cultures. How much does the meaning of documentary photography change over time, especially when shifting focus from the Middle East to the United Stat...

  “Zoetrope narrates an immigrant photographer’s point of view. It is a metaphor of its creator’s observation; it is the story of an artist split between two societies, the Middle East and the West. The artwork is a contrast performatively shown in the woods by the dancer, who, resembling the illusion in Zoetrope, experiences a sense of vertigo with respect to the hegemony of surveillance images in the contemporary era. The work conveys life experiences through self-interactions with, and within, the environment. A viewer is sentenced to observing freely and through a virtual world simultaneously. The act of spinning, broken dance, and contrast of soft body and harsh nature the video until the whole becomes an amorphic form, transforms previously polished works of images and challenges the accepted ways of viewing images in society. The goal is for the viewer to receive the work with a feeling of whirling, repetition, and a loss of balance reinforced by the accompanying video.” Sec...

Metamorphosis narrates an immigrant photographer's point of view. It is a metaphor of its creator; it is the story of an artist split between two societies, the Middle East and the West. The artwork is a humorously large, rough, sphere-shaped ball performatively rolled in the street by the artist, who, resembling the Sisyphean myth or perhaps a dung beetle, experiences a sense of vertigo with respect to the hegemony of photographs in the contemporary era. The work conveys life experiences through self-interactions with, and within, the environment. A photographer is sentenced to observing freely and through a lens simultaneously. Mirroring this, Metamorphosis juxtaposes straight photography with a radically manipulated imaging process. The pieces of paper conforming the sphere take us back to the history of photography before the digital era. The act of crumpling, tearing, and scratching the surfaces until the whole becomes an amorphic form, transforms previously polished works of ...

Isolation Time Interactive installation with a board game is the media I choose to show my artistic work, where form, scale, and senses merge. The connection between concepts is a strong ingredient that unites what seems separate. My research revolves around symbols and communication through games, especially among surrealist artists. Symbols, as a hidden social convention, is a silent master that shapes our physical world. My artwork is an attempt to create a world that the viewer knows is fabricated yet allows them to respond with their personal views. My installations reflect alternative associations with what is considered natural. My imagery depicts the symbolic world because it is a common language between the viewer and myself -- of expected, yet uncontrollable phenomenon. Feelings and interpretations are so heavily influenced by one ’ s environment, yet completely disregarded by it. Conversely, in my installations, each viewer ’ s actions directly influence other responses in a...