MAEDEH HOSEINI

Where Memory Dwells

Fine Art and Design

Your work reveals a hidden window in the gallery by cutting a hole in the wall. How do you perceive this intervention – as an archeological gesture which gives a place its memory back, or as a disruption of the white cube as a neutral exhibition space?
The idea for the cut-out came from a moment of surprise, when I realised that the window visible on the facade of the building, something you may pass by every time in the city centre, has completely lost its connection to the interior space because of the false wall covering it. As my research on displacement and place developed, I became interested in reactivating the primary corporeal experience of this place, which originally happens through its windows and its relation to the street. In that sense, the act of cutting and revealing what once was introduces a feeling of fragmentation associated with displacement. Although the act of disruption can hint at white cube critiques, my main intention was to approach this window as a transitional element, creating a dialogue with its place and displacement, rather than functioning as a neutral exhibition space.

In the conclusion, you mention the concept of wrong place as an alternative to both a stable sense of home and to complete placelessness. How do you understand this sense of being in the wrong place in relation to unrootedness, identity, and the possibility of new forms of connection?
I think I perceive myself as a transient subject. And I really relate to what Lucy Lippard writes in her amazing book, The Lure of the Local, that displacement is the norm for many of us, and we make connections with places in passing. I would also add people and stories. The range of topics, from a stable sense of home to displacement in the world and time we are living in, can transcend any single perspective and may even appear pathological. I am interested in how the experience of displacement functions as a transition, and as you consciously or inevitably go through it, how you find yourself in the archipelagos of not-being-at-home, but not being totally placeless.

How do you perceive displacement? What fascinates you about the relationship between physical movement and the feeling of never being fully settled?
I think of displacement as something intrinsic to habitation itself. Both of my residences back in Iran and here in Brno face each other through their windows. In my work, I interpreted the transitionality and fragmentary nature of displacement, moments where you are no longer coherent but instead feel disoriented and suspended. What interests me is that both being fully settled and being on the move produce forms of belonging. One in stillness and the other through transience and continuous passage. I think we existentially seek belonging, wherever we are.

photo: Polina Davydenko