Elmira Abolhassani 

As an Iranian artist who lived in Portugal for a decade and spent her childhood in Iran during the 90s, my life and memories were widely conditioned by a society that was constructing itself. Many Iranian cities have demolished old buildings down to this day and replaced them with new, modern ones. This Construction fever is common in lots of other countries like China or even Afghanistan. At the moment, it is rare to see areas with authentic architecture in Beijing or Tehran. Nowadays, we witness the destruction of historical signs in all cities in Iran and many other places like the cinema park in Kabul, Afghanistan (10th November 2020) without hesitates. 

In this work, I have built an identity wall that has locked-up my various memories and concepts around these rapid destructions of cultures and society characteristics through modernizations. The wall was made from several blocks derived from distinctive memories and contrasting episodes of emotions. Each block has a complete identity and is displaying a piece of my feeling concerning these destructions. I used diverse materials to reveal my perception. Small earthen and cement hills or Persian calligraphy are two elements that were repeated in various of the blocs. The walls of each block are made of transparent plexiglass and window glass.  This project is proceeding, so the size of the wall is growing.