Looking Glass
Fifteen Iranian participants use language and personal accounts to consider self-representation.
Interview-based installation with video and text
About the work
Looking Glass begins with conversations with fifteen Iranian people living in the United States. Participants choose Farsi words as part of an attempt to describe themselves beyond the designation of nationality. The installation brings these words into relation with interview video, allowing language and personal accounts to occupy the same space.
I am interested in the distance between being named by a cultural category and speaking in one’s own terms. Here, self-representation develops through the participants’ chosen words and the time given to an individual account. The work asks how an identity changes as it moves between a person, a language, and the audience encountering it.
Participant-selected Farsi words are encountered alongside video interviews.
Documentation
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