Paint Your Shadow Orange

Project Overview

Paint Your Shadow Orange is an ongoing participatory project that began in a rural setting in Mazandaran and has since travelled through workshops and installations in three other cities. The work was prompted by the publication of the children's book Narenji, the Free Cat (نارنجی، گربه‌ی آزاد) by Nasser Yousefi, and proceeds from the question of freedom that the book opens. Each participant is invited to enter the story on their own terms, through speaking, writing, illustration, or sewing, and the resulting fragments are gathered onto a fabric canvas using needlework and patchwork, forming a network of narratives that has no single author.

It takes the form of an interactive installation and a workshop that adapts to each setting it enters, with participants ranging in age from four to seventy. Across its iterations the project has been documented through video, image, and audio.

Context & Site

The project began at Abie Boland Gallery, an art academy and gallery Shima Raeeatparvar founded in her childhood village of Taleghani Mahalleh, on the outskirts of Sari. The gallery's location in a rural setting, embedded in a local community rather than a metropolitan art scene, shapes the kind of participation the project invites. The first gatherings took place inside a family circle and then expanded to women and children of the village, where sewing and fabric work belong to everyday domestic practice rather than to a specialist artistic vocabulary.

As the project travelled, it carried this relationship to each context. In Tehran and Rasht it continued in workshop and exhibition formats; in Qaem Shahr its most recent iteration was hosted at the Ordibehesht Music Complex. The settings have shifted between domestic, public, and informal spaces. The artist has spoken of running the project wherever a collective presence was possible, rather than restricting it to a single kind of venue.

Motivations & Questions

The project was initiated in response to two coinciding conditions: the publication of Naser Yousefi's Narenji, the Free Cat, and the social situation in Iran at the time, in which the need for safe spaces for dialogue and for hearing one another's life narratives felt urgent. From the beginning, the work was concerned less with producing an aesthetic object than with the kinds of exchange that could happen around its making.

The broader context the project responds to is the absence of accessible public spaces for free expression, dialogue, and being heard. In recent years, social and political conditions have made the closed studio or gallery feel insufficient as a place for artistic work, and have pushed artists toward forms of practice that take shape in direct conversation with audiences. Paint Your Shadow Orange sits within that shift: a work that proposes peaceful dialogue — free of judgement, prejudgement, and violence, as both its method and its goal.

The aesthetic dimension of these projects is often not what matters to me. What matters is the process, and the peaceful dialogues that form within it. Dialogues that, beyond the central concepts of the story, come from inside people's lives.

Conditions & Negotiations

Because the central thread of the project is freedom, it has encountered limits on where it can be staged publicly, and no institutional support has been available. In response, the project usually begins inside a safer circle, the artist's close circle and the community around Abie Boland Gallery, and only gradually expands outward as the group grows. The presence of children and adolescents, who participate alongside adults, has consistently introduced creative strategies of its own and shaped how the project moves into new settings.

Documentation

Collaborators & Support

Paint Your Shadow Orange was conceived and is facilitated by Shima Raeeatparvar through Abie Boland Gallery, in collaboration with Sepideh Pourreza, Solmaz Esmaeili, and Afsaneh Sadeghi. Participants across the project's iterations have included the artist's family circle, women and children of Taleghani Mahalleh village, and workshop participants in Tehran, Rasht, and Qaem Shahr.

For its first year the project was funded by Raeeatparvar herself. In its most recent iteration in Qaem Shahr, the Ordibehesht Music Complex hosted the workshop and acted as financial sponsor.

Further Resources

Naser Yousefi, Narenji, the Free Cat (children's book; the project's starting point) (in Persian).

Negareh Research and Education Institute, a post on *Make Your Shadow Orange* (in Persian).

About the Artist

Shima Raeeatparvar conceived and continues to facilitate Paint Your Shadow Orange as part of her ongoing work with children, adolescents, and local communities in northern Iran. Born in Sari in 1366 (1987), she is an architecture graduate, researcher, and art instructor for children and adolescents. A painter and designer, she has been active in the visual arts for many years and has taken part in numerous group exhibitions. Since founding Abie Boland (آبی بلند) Art Academy and Gallery in her childhood village of Taleghani Mahalleh, she has focused on children, adolescents, and the local community, designing and carrying out numerous projects in this context.

Instagram: @shima.raeeatparvar / @abie_boland_artacademy