Re-reading
The project White Cubes, by Fatemeh Fazael, in the 8th edition of Persbook contemporary art festival, is one of the artistic experiments which located itself between architecture, memory, and social criticism. This installation, which uses white mosquito nets on the rooftops of historic textures, can be analyzed on three intertwined levels, all of which present a perspective on the contemporary crisis of Iranian cities.
Level One: Lived nostalgia and collective memory
At this level, the work functions as a representation of a lived experience from the past. The white mosquito nets are a reminder of an era when urban life in Iran still revolved around the courtyard, the rooftop, and a coexistence with the climate. In this reinterpretation, the artist employs nostalgia not as an emotional refuge, but as a tool to summon memory. Consequently, nostalgia in White Cubes assumes a critical function, invoking memory and setting it in motion. This level confronts us with questions concerning the "continuity of identity" and "living in time."
Level Two: Critique of Development and the Commodification of Space
On the second level, White Cubes transcends the boundaries of memory to become a socio-political dialogue. The white cubes stand in direct contrast to the grey cubes of development-driven cities (apartments); the latter symbolize spaces that have reduced humans to mere consumers and emptied architecture of the meaning of living. Through the pure and unadorned simplicity of her intervention against these grey cubes, the artist is essentially demonstrating a form of resistance: a resistance against the gradual erasure of historic textures, the privatization of public spaces, and the forgetting of shared memory. From this perspective, the work is a critique of development policies that have turned the city into an economic commodity and the citizen into a mere consumer of energy.
Level Three: An Environmental and Climatic Statement
At the third level, White Cubes is elevated to an environmental dialogue. The mosquito nets, in all their simplicity, serve as a metaphor for "breathing"—the very thing that dense, polluted cities have denied us. The work, while highlighting the crisis of air pollution and excessive energy consumption, emphasizes the necessity of returning to climate-compatible lifestyles. Here, the white cubes become symbols of sustainability and climatic aesthetics; an alternative to the mass of iron and cement cubes that have rendered the face of Iranian cities grey and lifeless. At this level, White Cubes is not merely a poetic installation, but an ecological and moral warning about the future of living in Iran.
In short, the White Cubes project, as an interdisciplinary work, intertwines the three realms of memory, development politics, and environmental crisis through an honest and poetic language. This artwork demonstrates that contemporary art finds its true meaning when, instead of merely repeating form, it engages in the recreation of collective consciousness. White Cubes begins with a rethinking of the very concept of living—a moment when humanity can once again breathe in the city.