Museum of Diaspora (2024)
The “Museum of Diaspora” explores lived experiences and migration narratives, from a range of people and communities in Wales. Mana Baoosh probes the yawning chasm that exists between the perception of the refugee experience, perpetuated by the media, and the more nuanced reality. The “Museum of Diaspora” weaves together diverse elements to evoke the experience of displaced individuals.
As part of the Museum, there is a film with an actor reading from a fictitious creative project proposal about involving refugee artists. Alongside this film a series of stereotypical portraits of refugees in society which have been destroyed by bleach are presented in a vitrine.
The Museum moves on to present a series of samples of Middle Eastern rugs, set in relation to the image of a badly repaired road in Cardiff. Through this uncomfortable juxtaposition the artist reflects upon the arduous process of cultural integration all refugees undertake.
Then we move to a series of photographs in which the artist documents how individuals who seek asylum in the UK are transported often at night between temporary accommodation, where they might stay for one to two weeks at a time; they have no control over the length of their stay or where their next location will be. Regular taxis are used as shuttles between these locations. This process of dislocation can repeat itself six to seven times — or even more —depending on the individual’s circumstances. The entire journey to obtain refugee status can be prolonged, spanning from one year to a decade or even longer, depending on the complexities of their stories and the bureaucratic processes involved. Throughout this period, asylum seekers are faced with significant challenges. They are not allowed to work or rent a place to live, depriving them of the opportunity to lead a normal life. Instead, they find themselves in a state of limbo, unsure of when their situation will be resolved and their future secured.
In this series of constructed scenarios, actors, who have themselves experienced this process of enforced dislocation, are invited to relive the experience for the camera. The images are made at night, utilising chiaroscuro to allow the development of a visual language that evokes the discombobulation induced by this enforced dislocation.
This project seeks to convey the multifaceted odyssey of those who are forced to leave their homes and build new lives amidst uncertainty and instability during a very long-term process.
The project was initially exhibited as part of the ‘halftone_exhibition,’ the final graduation show at Carnedd Caerdydd. Subsequently, the work was displayed at the Oriel y Bont Gallery, USW, from July 1st to 31st, 2024. It is now being showcased for the third time at the West Wall Gallery in Cardiff, from September to November 28, 2024, with a music element added, featuring live performances by harpist Stacey Blythe, Setar player Arash Javadi, and DJ Hisss during the opening night.
In the exhibition, the photos were printed on backlit paper with lights behind them. The rugs were displayed in a vitrine on top of an image of a pothole, while the bleached photos were also placed in a vitrine near the film.
Flight 1979 – Gate 2 (2023- 2024)
Ablution- 2022
Iran has been gripped by protests since the death in custody of a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin who had been arrested for allegedly breaching the Islamic dress code for women. Fuelled by public outrage, the protest has continued to grow leading to a vicious crackdown from the regime in which many have been imprisoned, tortured, raped and killed. The question is how as an artist do I respond to this very male aggression?
Ablution is an ongoing project made in collaboration with my community of Persians sisters living in the UK. We, as part of the Iranian diaspora, feel a shared pain with our relatives in Iran. In this project, I chose to employ a quiet and feminine vernacular in which I take the intimate and personal ritual of washing and universalise it. The Iranian women I focus on are choosing to show parts of the body in public that are censored by the regime; in itself a small act of rebellion.
The scale of the final images, in the exhibition, their Madonna like quality, is reflective of the magnitude of the many small but immeasurably brave gestures of defiance offered by Persian women in the face of a terrifying reality. You, the viewer, are invited to look behind the curtain, both literally and figuratively, to share in the experience of a community in pain.
Through a Glass Darkly- 2023
This unpublished book includes photographic portraits of the artist’s friends; the subjects, some of whom have escaped repressive regimes in the East and some who are native to the West, seem to be hypnotised by their phone screens. Through this series of images, the artist explores the idea of a (one sided) conversation between political figures and their anonymous subjects through the medium of the smartphone, between those that dictate and proclaim and those who are dictated to. The figures in her portraits seem restless and secluded in a way that is at odds with the always-on connectivity offered by the technology in their hands.
Recent tweets from the current and former presidents of USA and Iran and those of five news outlets are layered into 280-character collages; their promises, their grandiose statements and their veiled messages are reduced to a purely aesthetic, graphic form. These collages are placed as a counterpoint to the ethereal portraits challenging the idea that as consumers of media, we can ever receive the world in its entirety. As the tweet collages compress time into a single image so too do the portraits carry a distinct period of time in which the subject can be seen scrolling on their device.
Through the commonalities that the artist observes between the sloganism experienced in both the East and the West she questions the reductive ‘othering’ carried within the very idea of a separation between these two worlds.
Rahim (Film)- 2021
“Rahim” is a documentary about Rahim El Habachi, a Moroccan gay Refugee living in Wales, who is a playwright, actor, and belly dancer. Upon discovering that he was living with HIV, he became an advocate for eradicating the stigma surrounding HIV.
Hotel Number 70 (film)- 2023
This is a film that focuses on three single mothers living in a shared house for asylum seekers in Cardiff. By conflating interviews with the soundtrack from a 1970s advertisement for the Holiday Inn hotel chain I explored the disconnect between the image of the hotel as a luxury aspirational experience and the shattered dreams of young people traveling to the UK to seek asylum. The project is not a critique of capitalism per se, instead it explores the paradoxes inherent in the language used to perpetuate capitalist ideals, and it contrasts them with the lived political realities shown in the film by the single mothers living in cramped conditions with very little hope for the future. Extraordinary profits are on offer, of course, for the providers of this poor-quality accommodation. And as a final irony, in the 21st century, the Holiday Inns in the UK are used as asylum seeker initial accommodation.
