Ordinary Grief, Parisa Azadi

27 May – 12 June 2022
In cooperation with Galerie Melike Bilir
In the frame of EXPANDED of 8 Triennial of Photography Hamburg 2022

„Ordinary Grief is a story of tenuous reconciliation. In 2017, I returned to Iran after 25 years of self-exile, where I embarked on a personal and political reclamation of my identity and history. With images spanning 2017-2021, Ordinary Grief is my attempt to reconcile despair and joy, exhaustion and hope. It’s about ordinary Iranians actively trying to create new futures for themselves despite the odds. It’s a love letter to a country from which I feel estranged, despite having been born there, and to the people who call it home.

As a woman who grew up between East and West, straddling the line between insider and outsider, my experiences are difficult, unromantic, and fragile. I’ve realized that two decades of living outside Iran brought with them a kind of cultural and personal amnesia. Ordinary Grief is also about what it means to forget and what it means to (try to) remember. Always, I’m attuned to joy, despite the hardships: I sought moments of serenity, celebration, and ritual in the shadows of perpetual grief. The photographs mark the passage of time as they document physical, emotional, and political limbo: they question what it means to long and to belong.“ Parisa Azadi

With the support of Claussen-Simon-Stiftung, Kunstfonds Neustart Kultur and Ministry of Culture and Media Hamburg.

Links: https://melikebilir.com/archiv/

www.parisaphotography.com/ordinarygrief#1

Credits: xxx