Kairos
Mona Aghababaei
- Period
- 2018
- Location
- Yazd
Project Overview
Kairos is a trilogy about the concept of time, presented in three formats and three cities. Kairos in Greek refers to qualitative time; the quality of the moment, that is, the time when conditions are right for an important decision or action. The first part of this trilogy was an installation shown in a museum in Tallinn, and the second part, this project, was carried out at the invitation of the Persbook festival in Yazd. Kairos raises questions about the concept of time within the space of collective work.
In the historic fabric of Yazd and in an abandoned sha'rbafi workshop, Mona Aghababaei made a fabric hoop with a group of local children and turned it into a game and an urban intervention in the alleys of the old quarter. The work proceeded in the form of performance and urban intervention, and its course took shape, more than being designed in advance, out of the relationship with the children and the place.
Context & Site
The project was carried out in the old fabric of Yazd; a place where, in Aghababaei's words, its architecture and urban design, as well as its residents, had a great effect on the form of the work and the course of its execution, such that in her view carrying out this same project elsewhere in this form would not have been possible. The abandoned sha'rbafi workshop where the work began had a small window onto the alley, and this very window became the site of the first interaction with the local children. The narrow, winding alleys of Yazd played a part in the mode of execution, and the pedestrian nature of the old fabric aided the freedom of the children's play with the fabric hoop; without any worry about vehicles, they could run and play with the hoop. The abandoned sha'rbafi workshops of this fabric, sha'rbafi being an ancient craft in the textile weaving of Yazd, were the ground on which the work found its place.
This installation took shape at the invitation of the 8th Iran Contemporary Art Annual (Persbook): Reweaving, curated by Neda Darzi and with the collaboration of Negar Farajiani, and with the support of the Yazd Visual Arts Association.
Participation & Process
Aghababaei had no plan at first to invite the children; but the window of the sha'rbafi workshop opened onto the alley, and the children peeked in from it now and then. Each time a child looked in and asked, she invited them to join; these small invitations gathered a group of six or seven boys aged seven to ten into the workshop.
The children played with the fabric, made handicrafts, and wound the fabric around a wooden hoop to make a fabric hoop. As far as possible, there was no compulsion in the work, and socializing and play were the main criterion of that day; playing with the hoop in the alley was also done with the help of the children themselves and without her participation. In this way, the children's bodies in the city came to the center of the work, and the connection of play, body, city, and time became pronounced in it.
The next day the children rolled the hoop through the city and played with it until they reached the playground, much like the old game of "hoop and stick" (rolling a hoop with a stick). At the playground, several gates had been set up with sha'rbafi implements so that a new game with the gates and the hoop might take shape; but the children played for less than ten minutes, gathered up the gates themselves, and returned to their previous game, football. In Aghababaei's account, the new game could not create any appeal for them.
Motivations & Questions
The start of the work was the invitation to the Persbook festival; the eighth edition of this program was held in Yazd under the title Reweaving, and its focus was on recycling, fabric, and the city of Yazd. Aghababaei's role in this work began from an initial idea; in her phrasing, place, time, and circumstances were the facilitators of the work so that a relationship with the children might form, and the children brought the project to fruition. In Aghababaei's words, working in the historic fabric of Yazd and using the abandoned sha'rbafi workshops strengthened her motivation to make a participatory space in carrying out the second part of Kairos.
She, who by her own account has for most of the time been occupied with personal work in the studio and the production of exhibition works, found that this project raised a question for her about the experience of collective work:
How and under what conditions can an artist carry a collective work forward, in such a way that collective participation is seen at the heart of the work at the same time? And how can she make use of her agency during collective participation in such a way that the meaning of the collective can be seen in it?
She had previously made sculptures in public spaces, but by her own account, making a work in a participatory space and interacting with residents was a new experience; more than staging the project across the city, it was this very motivation of experiencing participatory work that shaped the work in her. In her words, the most difficult aspect of the work was socializing with children from low-income and migrant families; working with children carries ethical sensitivities, and the boundary between participation and using them is, in her words, very slippery.
Documentation
Collaborators & Support
Kairos was carried out in collaboration with the 8th Iran Contemporary Art Annual, Persbook: "Reweaving" (curator: Neda Darzi; co-curator: Negar Farajiani) and with the support of the Yazd Visual Arts Association. The project's main participation was with a group of children of the old fabric of Yazd.
This project was carried out at the artist's personal expense; "Persbook" covered the transportation costs.
About the Artist
Mona Aghababaei (b. 1982, Isfahan) lives and works in Isfahan. She holds a BA and MA in handicrafts from Tehran University of Art. Her experiences have taken various paths over the course of her career, and in recent years she has been seeking to know the boundary between the applied arts and the visual arts. From 2013 to 2021, she was one of the runners of the Va space, which hosted artists and held exhibitions and art projects.
This entry was written on the basis of the project documentation and a conversation with the artist, and was edited in collaboration with the artist.