Abbas Zahedi: How to Make a How From a Why?
I saw Abbas Zahedi’s exhibition How to Make a How from a Why? exactly four days before the South London Gallery closed, and nine days before the London lockdown. I keep a fleeting memory of the show, as I came into the space in a rush, before running for a performance Zahedi curated that same night. The performance, Long Table Discussion With Abbas Zahedi: Lament invited the audience to join in a democratic discussion on collective and individual experiences of lament, grief, and loss. I thought I would have the time to come back, to stay and revel in the space. I pieced together fragments of memory of the installation Zahedi created, browsing through websites, Instagram pages. I remember looking at a sprinkler suspended from a metallic structure, linked to a water pump. With a quick step, I paced the concrete floor and stopped to kneel down to a bowl to smell the rose water. On my way out, seeing a green flashing light, I stopped abruptly. It wasn’t the usual Exit sign, but a flexed, toned arm.
Zahedi’s work radically alters the space that surrounds it. The atmosphere changes, charging the air with restraint, delicateness and a raw energy all at once. Absence and the consideration of loss are guiding threads in his practice. His art resembles the memory of lost loved ones; an ancient stinging pain reignited, coupled with a tinge of happiness, celebration. One cannot look at his work and not think about one’s own suffering, emotions. Abbas Zahedi offers a complex and multifaceted work which plays on the interaction between sensations, personal memory, and collective culture. He invites you in, but not for you to voyeuristically look at pain, prick at it.
The exhibition at the South London Gallery interweaves different contradictory energies. There is something cold, surgical and almost distant about the fire sprinkler installation. Metallic tubes connected at the ceiling, linking steel sprinklers to a pump give a bare feeling to the room. The slow dripping of the water drops and the white paper towel dispenser can feel alienating. It shows a harshness, a pain that eludes the viewer’s understanding. And there’s also warmth. The invitation to press on the pump, to participate in the work, and feel its resonance adds a layer of intimacy.The smell of rose which exudes from the water that scents the palms of the viewer adds a softness. It is also emotionally charged, no matter the cultural luggage. To many people, it at least alludes to nostalgia, an orientalist novel, the smell of a garden, or a morning routine.
The rose water is symbolic of a narrative, of a history. This, coupled with the choice of objects and their settings on the floor is a reference to commemorative libations and burying rituals in Iranian culture. Zahedi diverts objects that have collective or common meaning to assign personal symbolism. Vulnerability, a notoriously complex and ever-changing word, exudes from the installation. He somewhat also reveals the inability to communicate the core of loss, at least not tangibly.
The installation occupies space in a way that highlights bareness. There is texture in blank spaces. Thick rose-filled air. An almost palpable absence of people, bodies. The rose water needs to be in movement, pumped, smelled.
Participation here is not to be taken lightly, as a buzzword, a trend to be slapped onto his art. The viewer interacts with the work intimately. The artist weaved in a narrative that is as harsh as it is delicate, gentle. Just like the coldness and warmth of the installation, collective and personal experiences are mingled in the artwork as mutually feeding forces. The finesse in his practice lies in his ability to transmit a human (and humane) experience all the while transcending aesthetic form.
In a very strange turn of events, How to Make a How From A Why? spoke to our current reality. It invited us to think about belonging, community and the memory of what we have now lost. Abbas Zahedi’s work offers an opening to discuss pain and vulnerability, that which can not be easily shared. The loss of a loved one, of control or the loss of normality. The installation highlights the tension between what is, and what has disappeared. How do you remember? What do you do with what’s left?
Just like the ending of an explanatory leaflet Abbas Zahedi gave to the audience for his performance, Lament: “There is an end, but no conclusion”.