In Conversation
Capturing the Invisible
Discover how Golnaz Payani, born in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war, explores the concept of trauma through her artwork. By capturing the invisible and delving into the notion of perception, Payani’s work reflects her own experiences of disappearance and the conflict between ostensible appearance and invisible privacy.
1. Briefly describe the work you do.
I am a visual artist who explores various mediums, with a specific focus on fabric. In creating my artworks, I meticulously unravel the fabric, removing sections of the weft or warp, utilizing destruction as a tool for creation. My upbringing was in an environment where the constant threat of sudden destruction lingered. The possibility of war resuming, a major earthquake, or the volcanic eruption of Damavand could wipe out everything in Tehran overnight. Despite these warnings, we were encouraged to pursue education, attend university, and build our lives. In my artistic practice, I reflect on this process through the technique of unraveling, symbolizing the marriage of destruction and construction. Through the method of unweaving, I disrupt and weaken the smooth surface of the fabric, resulting in more or less abstract shapes. Additionally, I aim to convey concepts such as the body at work and the duration of labor through this meticulous process. The theme that captivates me is the trace. I am passionate about revealing elements that persist and resist the passage of time. The power of the trace extracts a moment from the past, making it more visible than anything surrounding us. This force blurs the line between the present and the past, the visible and the invisible, the appearance and the disappearance. For this reason, I became interested in working with fabric. The versatile nature of textiles, capable of both concealing and revealing, fascinates me. Textiles serve as both a boundary and a connection, representing us by covering us.
2. What or who inspires your work and how has that influenced both your work and your identity as an artist?
It’s partly my work at the studio that inspires me. Often, what I had planned doesn’t unfold as expected. Deleuze stated that “having an idea” is a celebration for artists; for me, it’s the so-called “happy mistake” that marks the celebration. It allows me to discover new paths and forms. Stephen Hawking noted that man is the product of nature’s mistakes. I believe in that – to create, there must be an element of error, provoking surprise to achieve something new. My work is also influenced by photos, flea markets, and real and fictional stories. I am particularly sensitive to films, with Tarkovsky being the artist who influenced me the most, both through his films and the atmospheres he creates, as well as his book “Sculpting in Time.” Artists like Chantal Akerman, Abbas Kiarostami, Bela Tarr, etc., have also left an impact on me. Moreover, philosophical, psychological, or scientific ideas introduce me to a new vocabulary and influence my visual language, as well as enriching my spoken language. Concepts such as the importance of experience in phenomenology, the resilience concept in psychology, the way Alzheimer’s patients remember things, or how we “perceive” color allow me to explore the meaning of “trace” from various perspectives.
3. Making Art traditionally carry cultural, historical, or personal narratives. How do you incorporate these narratives in your contemporary pieces?
I was born in 1986, during the Iran-Iraq war. The following years were marked by the dissemination of lists of missing persons. I remember the buses that brought back soldiers declared missing, the empty graves, the fragmented bodies, and the photos and objects that were all that was left of a person—relics taking the place of a son or a father in a family. These disappearances took various forms in Iran, affecting not only political figures but also everyday aspects, imposed by adults’ injunction to silence, forcing children to keep their daily lives hidden. Celebrations such as birthdays, weddings, and gatherings took place in secret, away from prying eyes. My childhood was a constant conflict between ostensible appearance and invisible private. At 15, I was forced to wear the veil, changing my relationship with fabric. For someone who loved playing with fabric scraps collected from my grandmother, they became objects of oppression. Wonderful, tangible, and multicolored toys turned into a uniform erasing all traits of my personality. My departure for France in 2009 had a significant influence on my artistic work. Upon arrival, I found myself alone in a completely new context, far from family, friends, and everything I had known before. That’s when I felt like I was the trace of my past life for the first time. I developed an interest in what was now out of sight, disappeared, and invisible, rekindling my love for fabric.
4. Do you aim for a particular emotional or sensory experience in audience interaction with your pieces, considering that textiles or mixed media artworks can evoke a tactile response?
My textile works are not meant to be handled, but I never use distancing barriers, even for my large-scale pieces. I aim to provoke in the spectator the desire to approach, to look closely, and even the desire to touch them. This closeness and desire help elevate the question of the body and its experience. Since, with my works, I aim to evoke manual labor and the presence of “my body” at work.
5. Given that textiles and mixed media often generate residuals, how do you specifically approach sustainability and work to minimize environmental impact in your artistic practice?
This is a difficult question for me, as it raises issues that concern me greatly but for which In the work “All That Remains,” soon to be exhibited at my solo show at the Alexandra David Neel Museum, I showcase all the threads I removed from the pieces presented in this exhibition. Actually, the theme of “what remains” and the connection between “destruction and creation” are at the heart of my work. Not only to raise awareness about “residue and recycling” but especially to illustrate two crucial concepts for me regarding disappearance and time. I believe that nothing ever truly disappears, even if it is currently outside of our sight, invisible to the eye, or even forgotten! I think we infinitely retain everything we have experienced, seen, and felt. And I believe this illustrates the circle of time, a more or less repetitive cylindrical movement, a thought that believes in layers of consciousness and unconsciousness, accumulating upon each other and transmitted from generation to generation.
