Repository

Bast Repository is a growing collection of participatory art projects that have taken place in Iran. Each project is presented as an entry written by the editorial team from the artist's own materials and a conversation with them, covering the setting, the process of participation, and the conditions the project worked within. Entries are accompanied by documentation, credits, and further sources, and some are joined later by a re-reading: an independent response from another artist, researcher, or cultural practitioner.

The repository does not set out to establish a definitive history. It gathers projects that took shape in different places and under different pressures, and each remains open to revision as new materials and readings arrive.

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11 results Intervention

Owzar

AhmadAli Kargaran

*Owzar* is a project centered on salvaging a decommissioned wooden sailing dhow on Hormoz Island and rebuilding it into a mobile, land-bound structure. Instead of traveling by sea, this modified vessel moves through the island's landlocked neighborhoods to bring cultural, artistic, and educational programs directly to local children and youth. The vehicle was constructed by combining weathered timbers from the old dhow, leftover scaffolding pipes from a local construction site, and the wheeled trailers typically used along Iran's southern coast to haul motorboats out of the water.

Kairos

Mona Aghababaei

*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.

Enghelab Azadi / Azadi Enghelab

Nastaran Safaei

*Enghelab Azadi / Azadi Enghelab* is a participatory video performance staged directly in the public spaces of Tehran. Dressed entirely in black, the artist walked a ten-kilometer route connecting Enghelab (meaning "Revolution") Square and Azadi (meaning "Freedom") Square, making the round trip while carrying a tray of nazri dates to offer to passersby. Nazri refers to traditional food offerings prepared and distributed as a devotional act, often to mark a period of mourning or to honor the deceased. Offering dates from a hand-held tray remains one of its most recognizable street variations.

Steps

Shaghayegh Kamyar

*Steps* was a participatory exhibition space that took shape through the continual reconfiguration of its arrangements by visitors.

White Cubes

Fatemeh Fazael Ardakani

*White Cubes* was a site-specific installation that unfolded across four nights on the connected rooftops of Yazd's historical neighborhood. Fifteen white mosquito nets — borrowed from the neighbors — were installed in the spaces where, until a generation ago, families slept, prayed, and gathered through the summer nights. The piece reactivated an object that had once been infrastructure for daily life in the region and asked what kind of situation it could hold today.

Printing Machine

Amaanatdaari

*Printing Machine* is a simple four-station mechanical press that participants operate entirely themselves: each station prints one colour, and the participant walks away with their own four-colour print. It is installed outdoors, in front of Amaanatdaari, with no staff present, and runs continuously day and night for the duration of each iteration.

Talk-See

Ali Moammery

*Talk-See* is a mobile art space built inside a passenger car. Small paintings made on one-thousand toman banknotes are displayed either framed or as postcards on a handmade stand that replaces the front passenger seat. The audience is whoever happens to call a ride-hailing taxi through Snapp or Tapsi and finds themselves, by chance, inside what is effectively a small gallery on wheels. A conversation between the driver-artist and the passenger develops over the course of the ride, and the works can be purchased if the passenger is interested.

Workers Don't Go to the Factory

A collective of artists and social activists

Workers Don't Go to the Factory is a collective narrative of the history, everyday life, and resistance of the residents of the Deh Vanak neighborhood against official trends of demolition, appropriation, and Gentrification-Induced Displacement. This project was formed on December 9, 2018, in collaboration with a group of artists, social activists, and neighborhood residents, and was realised in the urban space Deh Vanak neighborhood. The event included a collection of photographs, photo-collages, installations, local maps, video art, musical performances using found objects from the demolished houses, and an open tribune.

Tehran Monoxide

Negar Farajiani

*Tehran Monoxide* is a long-term participatory project initiated by Negar Farajiani in 2010 around the air pollution crisis in Tehran. Across five phases, the project moved through schools, pharmacies, urban and green spaces, galleries, and rural workshops, gathering artists, children, students, and citizens into a sustained inquiry about the relationship between people, the city, and the environment. Cultural, artistic, scientific, and educational tools were used to create sensitivity and awareness around the crisis, but the central concern was not the production of a finished work — it was the formation of dialogue, intergenerational learning, and shared care across the city's everyday spaces.

Cafe Konj Performances

Jinoos Taghizadeh

*Cafe Konj Performances* was a series of seven long-duration performances staged in a small cafe in central Tehran. Each performance ran twelve continuous hours, on the seventh day of each month, for seven consecutive months. The performances were each different in form and content, and the audience's role shifted across the seven months: at times they were active participants drawing alongside the artist or writing letters, at other times observers or even unwitting subjects of what was happening around them.

Book Reading in Sanandaj Park

San-Art Group - a collective of independent artists including Shilan Borhani, Arash Zaman, and Shima Farhadi

*Book Reading* was a participatory experience in an urban public space, created with the aim of establishing a simple collective setting for reading. Through a public call, the project invited citizens to bring a book with them on Sunday evenings and read in silence in the park for two hours. There was no specific theme, pre-determined book, or content guidance, and the choice of book was entirely up to each individual. From the very first session, a significant number of citizens participated in the project, and the park's atmosphere gradually transformed into a space distinct from its everyday function - a space filled with silence, focus, and shared experience. As the sessions continued, the presence of families and children became more prominent, and the project evolved from a simple artistic act into a social and cultural experience where the boundaries between artist, audience, and performance disappeared.