Displacement
Solo exhibition of Bahar Samadi
Opening at Aaran Gallery on 25th November 2016
On view until 8th December

A door opens. A considerable amount of the material in my work is other people’s images and sound archives. Anything that can be filmed, re-filmed and filmed over and over, or scanned, re-recorded or downloaded, can become a part of the process. These diverse images are from amateur 8mm films that I have found as well as downloaded videos from cyberspace or forgotten files on a hard disk. Any camera or imaging device can be incorporated in to my work. There is no limit. Passing through the machines.
A ladder. It’s only through the montage process that the work begins, takes shape and comes to an end. There is no predefined structure or script. The images as they are – or independent from their content which can be non representational- create their own setting. Or they impose the necessity of repetition, or as an indicator of their nature in a different arrangement. This repetition transforms an ordinary image to a mysterious matter. Images are in dialogue with each other and at the same time they compete to become the dominant image. One image invites another one, passes through it and returns to it. Image finds its own “other” presence, either in resemblance or in-distinction; introduces it, possesses it, releases it or is replaced by it. A row of windmills.
The images are the main characters. The image of a tree is not a tree, but an image in which there is a tree.
Here is the fiesta of dancing images.
Excerpt from catalogue written by Bahar Samadi

Bahar Samadi born in 1981, has studied Architecture at the Art Faculty of Azad University of Tehran, Iran and continued her studies in field of Filmmaking at Eicar Cinema School in Paris, in 2012.In the course of filmmaking, she primarily reaches for found footages and her personal archive, using structural techniques like cinematic omission and narrative form diversion to rewrite the pictorial memory of images. She decodes probable life of images by embarking on an imaginary journey between the author and the spectator. Her films have been shown in a number of platforms, galleries and film festivals around the world such as “ Semi Dark Room-Luminous Void” at Aaran Projects-Iran (2015), “Cork Film Festival”- Ireland (2014), “Fronteira – International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival” – Brazil (2014), “Limerick Avant-Garde Cinema, The Royal Picture Show” – Ireland (2014), “The 10th Beijing Independent Film Festival” – China (2013), “42nd International Film Festival of Rotterdam (IFFR)”- Netherlands (2013).