Aisling Sareh Haghshenas is an Irish-Iranian artist based in Tehran. She graduated from the Faculty of Art and Architecture, Islamic Azad University, Tehran in 2000. Since then she has had many solo and group exhibitions in Iran, the U.A.E., England, America, Russia, Austria, Italy and Slovakia. She has a passion for urban photography. She also creates installations and video-arts. She is an animal rights activist and works on projects to promote awareness of animal rights and protecting the environment. She is also a member of the Association of Iranian Painters.
AISLING SAREH
Statement for Remnants of Tehran
WHY DID YOU STAY?
The first question I am always asked is: You stayed? Why? You could have left …easily, years ago…
I am a Tehrani, Tehran is my home.
The Tehran of my childhood is not what you see. Over the past 40 years parts of Tehran have completely changed as though the city I knew is a distant memory.
My Tehran is disappearing before my eyes. It is changing into a scary ugly concrete monster. It is rapidly changing and the people who have moved here have no sense of belonging. I love the city I see, but it only exists in my memory, it is as though there is a city co-existing parallel to this city, and that is the city I paint.
I am a Tehrani but Tehran is no longer my city.
I clearly remember the weekends of Tehran and going for walks and drives with my parents. My Tehran has colours, each neighbourhood and street has its own colour and smell. These colours are now replaced with concrete, stone and strange forms. To this day when someone mentions a neighbourhood I imagine the colours. Colours and scents which come from trees, gardens, swimming pools and even executions in the city squares, the colour of memories whether good or bad.
There are many trees, houses and streets that will always remain in my memory though they disappeared years ago. In this collection I have tried to share my colours with you, before the become faded from my memory.
These are some of the colours of my vanished Tehran.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES
By Helia Darabi
Where is Tehran? Resting on the beautiful foothills of the Alborz mountains, covered in haze. What is Tehran? A vast metropolis similar to Proteus, fluid and faceless, pouring down the foothills and its grey face is ever changing. Tehran, unlike many major capitals, with no regard for its future inhabitants, constantly loses its identity. Aisling Haghshenas has kept a clear memory of her city, paying attention to the many details and is protecting this memory. She feels that this should also be the concern of the general public. But many of us Tehranis have adapted and are used to our fading memories of the city. The never ending changes in the city worry her but have no effect on our conscious. Her visual memory is a harsh reminder of the old face of the city and the change of the winding lanes to high-rise buildings and shopping malls constantly bothers her. Each shiny skyscraper which brings joy and happiness to shoppers is an eyesore to her. Aisling will never get used to this. Over a period of five years she has taken upon herself to document and save these memories through photography and has been painting the past of a city which now looks like scars and furrows. Through photographs she has documented different neighbourhoods of Tehran and the inside and outside of old houses at times just before they were demolished. For her this is not just a documentation. She also has feelings for these houses and the neighbourhoods and their names have a colour and scent for her. She wants to paint the colours of these places, the colours of the remnants of Tehran which are her distant memories. In her mind there is a city parallel to the Tehran that she lives in. A city that remains in her memory. At times she sees parts of this in the city she lives in and for a moment there is a connection between the two Tehrans and a chain of associations between these two cities which connects them eternally. But in the fast changing face of Tehran, every once in a while, a part of this chain is lost and in this way the city of her memories loses its connection with the Tehran of today and vanishes. Aisling tries to save each link and tries to prevent these memories and the colours of the past from fading, she has taken on the responsibility of our collective memories and attempts to bring back that forgotten city. There is no untouched part of our city to show our next generation, not even trees that lived for hundreds of years or buildings which are the physical foot prints of the history of our city, in which many stories are embedded and in which we can see important events of this land and preserve them and present them to future generations. In this collection, Aisling Haghshenas is facing this challenge. Her experience in living in two parallel cities, is a call to us to experience the old neighborhoods of Tehran in these paintings, so that though gone forever, we may find a connection in our memories.