In This Issue

Collective Memory and Displacement:
Nazanin Noroozi

By Nazanin Noroozi
From the series This Bitter Earth, #14
22 x 30 Pigmented linen pulp and abaca on
cotton base sheet

My practice is rooted in a search for universal evocations of loss and longing, often described as melancholia, the Portuguese saudade, or the Turkish huzun. I work with imperfect materials: poorly framed or overexposed family photos, shaky or blurred amateur clips, or pixelated, low quality video recordings. My work mines public, personal, and historical archives, manipulating, and layering found images and videos to elicit feelings of displacement, tragedy, and instability.

I usually work in multiple, but my work is not editioned: the repetition of imagery serves as distinct and alternative versions of history, memory, people, and place. Archeology of technologies such as super 8 home-videos and early computer graphics, as well as printmaking techniques help me navigate between still images and time-based mediums to explore fragile states of being and the idea of home that never materialize.

From the series This Bitter Earth #5
18 x 24, Pigmented linen pulp and abaca on cotton base sheet
From the series This Bitter Earth, Kiss #2, 16 x 20” Linen pulp and polyester plate lithograph on handmade hemp paper

THIS BITTER EARTH

Nazanin Noroozi’s work mines public, personal, and historical archives, manipulating and layering found images and videos to elicit feelings of displacement, tragedy, and instability. Her practice is rooted in a search for universal evocations of loss and longing, often described as melancholia, the Portuguese saudade, or the Turkish huzun. While she often works in multiple, Noroozi’s work is not editioned: her repetition of imagery serves as distinct and alternative versions of history, memory, people, and place, or as non-temporal sequences of events.

Noroozi works with imperfect materials: poorly framed or overexposed family photos, shaky or blurred amateur clips, or pixelated, low quality video recordings. By reconfiguring; painting and printing on top of; digitally altering; and layering details; Noroozi abstracts her found images to create ambiguous representations of historical events and family memories, transforming her source clips into collective histories. The viewer is invited to reconstruct time and create new narratives through a nonlinear experience of the work, merging and interspersing stories, and reframing specific events as shared sentiments. Her series of handmade paper artworks center around found footage and archival images from viral news stories juxtaposed with hand painted Super 8 family movie frames. The body of work encompasses four main image series that Noroozi reconsidered and revisited in multiple: the 2020 downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 by the Iranian government; the devastating explosion at the Port of Beirut, Lebanon in 2020; the last U.S. airplane leaving Afghanistan in 2021 after the military’s withdrawal; and home footage of a childhood birthday party in Iran.

From the series This Bitter Earth, Tehran 200108 #1, 
pigmented linen pulp on handmade cotton base sheet
From the series This Bitter Earth, Kabul 210816 #1
22 x 30, pigmented linen pulp and abaca on cotton base sheet
From the Series This Bitter Earth, Beirut 200804 #2,
30 x 40 pigmented linen pulp on handmade cotton base sheet

Imagery from Noroozi’s Super 8 home videos serves as a foil to the political permutations of instability and insecurity described above. Punctuating the historical horrors around them, the birthday party Noroozi depicts in paper pulp becomes tinged with tension, as though the celebrants are anticipating a disruption to their joy. By blurring and distorting the home videos and news footage alike, Noroozi removes the individuality of her subjects to allow viewers to insert themselves and their own stories into the found images. She universalizes otherwise personal feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, and despondence: a sense of sadness at the loss of life, despair at betrayal of principle, and the helplessness of losing control of one’s destiny rippling out globally.

This Bitter Earth excerpt
From the series This Bitter Earth, Tehran 200110 #2 
Triptych – 24 x 54 total , Each panel 24 x 18”
Screen print, abaca and copper plate etching on handmade cotton sheet
From the Series This Bitter Earth, Beirut 200804 #1
30 x 40”, pigmented linen pulp on handmade cotton base sheet
From the series This Bitter Earth, Beirut 200804 #2,
Triptych – 24 x 54” total. Each panel 24 x 18”
Copper plate etching on abaca and cotton
Self Portrait
All photos courtesy of the artist.

Nazanin Noroozi is a multi-disciplinary artist incorporating moving images, printmaking and alternative photography processes to reflect on notions of collective memory and displacement. Noroozi’s work has been widely exhibited at galleries and museums across the world including SPACES, Cleveland, OH; Athopos, Athens, Greece; Golestani Gallery, Dusseldorf, Germany; Immigrant Artist Biennial, NARS, Brooklyn; Noyes Museum of Art, New Jersey; as well as NY Live Arts, School of Visual Arts, and Postcrypt Art Gallery at Columbia University. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (film and video), Marabeth Cohen-Tyler Print/Paper Fellowship at Dieu Donne, Artistic Freedom Initiative, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, and Mass MoCA residency. She is an editor at large of Kaarnamaa; A Journal of Art History and Criticism. Noroozi completed her MFA in painting and drawing from Pratt Institute. Her works have been featured in various publications and media including, Die Zeit Magazine, Evergreen Review, BBC, Elephant Magazine, Financial Times, and Brooklyn Rail.

nazaninnoroozi.net