Steps
Shaghayegh Kamyar
- Period
- 2023
- Location
- Payiz Gallery, Iranian Artists' Forum, Tehran
Project Overview
Steps was a participatory exhibition space that took shape through the continual reconfiguration of its arrangements by visitors.
Context & Site
The work was presented at the Payiz (Autumn) Gallery of the Iranian Artists' Forum, curated by Pegah Behroozfar. Two layers of context are intertwined in this project. First, the social character of the venue itself: in the artist's words, the Iranian Artists' Forum is among the most heavily frequented galleries, where the likelihood of access and visits by different social groups is greater than at many other, better-known galleries, and this feature carried great importance and impact for this project. Second, the social-political moment: the exhibition was held in the atmosphere following the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement, and it was this atmosphere that allowed the work to shift from an installation into a collective space for the expression of experiences.
Unlike the exhibition's initial framework, which centered on children's work and free schools, the audience for this work was all visitors; this shift in audience was itself part of the project's idea and made sense only in such an accessible venue.
Participation & Process
The work was on view from 9 to 18 June 2023. The project's only instruction was a single sentence: The present arrangement comes to fruition through your participation. Build, add and subtract, write, draw, change; let us talk.
In the middle of the gallery, a square field of sand had been made, with a worn-out chair at its center. Above this space, second-hand and recycled clothing was suspended from the ceiling to the same square dimensions. On one wall, unframed canvas fabric was mounted so that visitors could write and paint on it, and tools and materials for building, adding, removing, and playing were also made available to participants. By the end of the exhibition, nearly all the gallery walls were covered with the writings, drawings, slogans, and interventions of visitors.
The visitors were the audience and the passersby of the Iranian Artists' Forum and the exhibition's guests, who had come to the gallery either through the exhibition's publicity or by chance, and who could take part in the project without any direct invitation or guidance. Through the text at the entrance to the gallery space, they were invited to write, draw, add or remove something, change, build, or even destroy part of the space. Participation had no predetermined path, and nowhere was any part of the space defined as an off-limits zone.
From around the third or fourth day, the intensity of the interventions increased markedly, and by the end of the exhibition almost no untouched part remained in the gallery; what had been the opening arrangement gradually became a collective space for writing, drawing, protest, remembrance, play, and dialogue. Among the writings and drawings, protest slogans and the portrait of Mahsa Amini appeared repeatedly.
The artist saw her role in this work less as producing a final result than as designing conditions that others could appropriate, rewrite, and transform. At times the space was tidied slightly so that the possibility and the desire to participate again on subsequent days would remain available.
Motivations & Questions
The project began with an invitation to collaborate on the exhibition. The initial proposal was to design a work based on play with sand, with reference to the games used in child psychology to express emotions. The coincidence with the events of the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement fundamentally changed the project's course; although the invitation to collaborate had been extended before these events, the final decision about the arrangement and the mode of participation was made after the movement began and was directly influenced by the social atmosphere of that period.
In the artist's words, it mattered to her to create a situation in which the audience, beyond observing, might find an opportunity to express their own emotions and thoughts in that historical juncture, and in which the final form of the arrangement would take shape as a result of the participation, presence, and action of others. This experience later brought a question into sharper focus for her: from what moment does an artwork no longer belong to the artist, and how can participation dissolve the boundary between artist, audience, and work?
Conditions & Negotiations
During the process, the artist was under considerable pressure from the gallery over setting up the installation and over logistical matters, to the point that on the last day she withdrew; but through continued dialogue they found solutions to carry on. In response to the constraints of presenting in the gallery space, unframed canvas fabric was mounted on the wall; the frame was removed so that, as far as possible, the boundary between wall and canvas would disappear. In the end, with certain changes made, the gallery was persuaded, and the work proceeded essentially as had been anticipated.
Documentation
Collaborators & Support
Pegah Behroozfar curated the work at the Payiz Gallery of the Iranian Artists' Forum. It was made and presented without any financial support, at the personal expense and production of Somayeh Dadras and Shaghayegh Kamyar.
About the Artist
Shaghayegh Kamyar (Tehran, 1986) is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher. She holds a BA in set design and an MA in art research. Her works mainly address the relationship between art, play, participation, public space, and collective life, and, depending on the needs of each project, she uses media such as games, performance, installation, photography, video, and research. A significant part of her practice rests on designing situations in which the audience is not merely a viewer but becomes one of the elements that shape the work.
Instagram: @Shaakaam_
This entry was prepared on the basis of documentation and texts provided by the artist.