SEARCH FOR THE MAP GUIDE

Photo-based installation

In Search for a Map Guide, I brought two studio spaces into relation by drawing a map of my studio in Tehran on the floor of the studio made available to me during my residency in Weimar, Germany. The work uses this correspondence between two places to create a new situation in which the map becomes both a representation of a space and a surface that can be altered through physical presence.

Working in a new studio, in a city with a different language, I wanted to leave a visible trace of my presence and gradually give the space a character of my own. I chose Persian as the material of the work to make my presence and its impact on the studio visible.

The map consists of text referring to works and events throughout art history in which the artist or the artwork was removed. It was drawn on the studio floor using handmade stencils and chalk powder. During the Open Studio, visitors walked over the text, gradually erasing it with their footsteps. After the Open Studio, I photographed the studio floor, documenting the map in its altered state.

I then made two scale replicas of the studio desk in Weimar and covered their surfaces with the photograph of the map drawn on the floor. The two replicas were exhibited simultaneously in Iran, my country of origin, and Germany, the country of destination, as a way of relocating my studio across two geographical contexts.