Histories

Histories interrogates the complexities of memory and politics of history through the display of video projected interviews and cropped archival photographs. My investigation into the contours of memory is rooted in an extensive research on the origins of my last name Shahidi Marnani (martyr of Marnan). The martyred ancestor had been executed in Isfahan apparently by the religious authority accused of being Baha’i, in the late 19th century. Over a period of two years, I spoke to relatives in my hometown Isfahan to trace the untold story of this incident. In three video projections, we are presented with recorded testimonies from six relatives each telling a different story. The montage weaves together the contradicting narratives, not to unravel a truthful image of the past, but to foreground the complex process of remembrance and as an act of archiving lost histories.

Photo samples

The ghostly quality and erratic placement of the documents offer a glimpse into the place and era in question while bringing forth the texture and nature of distant memories. As an archive of oral testimonies and photographic documents displaying what seems as ambiguous and lost fragments from the past, histories opens a new space for documenting and discussing forgotten memories and their relation to the present.