شکار آزادی | SHEKARE ĀZĀDI
CHASING FREEDOM
Dentro, (Porto, Portugal), 2025
What Escapes Us - Susana Chiocca - curator's text
In the beginning, there is a color, a sensation, an image, a sigh, an emotion, a word, or a sound... a touch. In the beginning, we invent a gesture, and within it, we inscribe ourselves, or try to. Various forms of imprint can be perceived in this exhibition, in which Roxanna Albayati problematises aspects of the Iranian diaspora through a feminine lens.
They are approaches to a place that is also hers, through her mother, but one that constantly slips away. It is a land, a culture, and an experience that are barred from her. She creates her own Iran through linguistic and national crossings. Between Farsi and English, she presents a looping poem of her own authorship, stretching across both exhibition spaces, asking: My dreams, where have they gone? – an attempt to hold onto, to rediscover that illusion which allows us to be here.
She creates her Iran through orality, in a kind of sonic chiaroscuro featuring her mother’s voice in Farsi, interspersed with two other voices whispering and translating the poem: her own voice also in Farsi, and that of Rebecca Moradalizadeh in English.
Her mother speaks of her experience inside and outside her homeland, pre- and post- revolution, the attempt to return, and finally, the inevitable permanence in the United Kingdom. This content, conveyed with varying degrees of gravity, also transcends us, but what remains is the phonetics, the sound, and what we can grasp from it. Voices that assert themselves, that grow stronger as the track unfolds, the tension later emphasised by the sound of the ghaychak, which at the same time hypnotises us.
She also creates her Iran through the moving images in the first space, filmed in neighbouring countries like the United Arab Emirates or Armenia. Another attempt at touch, through similarity and affinity, in a tracing and pursuit of an inner fire. The immeasurable flames that seize us contrast with the sweet tears of falling snowflakes.
In exhibitions, we are usually eluded by the processes - what is unseen, unheard – and here, specifically, the ground that is not stepped on, symbolised by a part of the body amputated before it could even become whole. A transgenerational diaspora that, articulated with the movement for women’s liberation and empowerment in Iran, allows for the construction of a path that transcends the creator’s individuality and extends to her community: a community dispersed, excluded, dismembered across the world.
Despite the devastating, oppressive, and violent undertone of Albayati’s body of work, there is also lightness and depth, another sense of time, if we allow it...where we are overwhelmed by powerful emotions, that do not suffocate, but move us. When they try to steal our hope, the answer is to keep dreaming.
“For love, for freedom, for radiant things”
Natália Correia, from Unpublished Writings (1985/1990)
Curator | Susana Chiocca
Additional videography | Soraya S & Erfaan Mahmoodi
Featuring | Šur for cello and live electronics by Roxanna Albayati and Marat Ingeldeev
Additional voice artists | Rebecca Moradalizadeh & Zora Za
Animation | Argha
Audio editing | Sami El-Enany
Documentation | Yasmine Moradalizadeh
Gratitude | to Mina K, Erfaan Mahmoodi, Rebecca Moradalizadeh & Mejlis Institute
Supported by | Arts Council England, Help Musicians & Abastan Factory