The exposition Scented Rooms aims to be a form of resistance that finds itself in poetry and politics, poetic imagery, re-thinking censored archives, existential reflections on photography and cinema, and dance. At the very core of the research is an important historic icon in Iran; The country's oldest theater which was burnt down by extremists during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, closed forever and has decayed over time. The burning of this theater, along with many others, was the starting point for imposing restrictions on art and culture. The research departs contextually from the efforts of the Islamic government to control civil society. It is a reaction to a history of imposing a specific language discourse and discarding elements that represent a non-religious view, visual changes in the urban space and limiting access to specific types of information that refer to citizens’ collective memory. Giving agency to this theater, the research aims to revive the collective and public memory of a society, being the voice of those that have been silenced for a long time.
Scented Rooms
Born in Tehran, Iran in 1988, Shauheen Daneshfar is an artist, filmmaker and photographer based between Stockholm and Tehran. Working with analogue material, his works investigate decay, memory, poetic imagery, and existentialism in film and still image and their intersections. In his artistic practice, he utilizes different materials and tools such as celluloid films, alternative chemical processes or other types of technological devices to achieve a poetic and melancholic aesthetic. He studied photography before joining the Iranian Youth Cinema Society to learn the ins and outs of filmmaking, adding to his knowledge through a cinematography bachelor’s degree at the University of Art in Tehran, he studied a master's degree in Film and Media at Stockholm University of the Arts.
Visit the exposition in the database Research Catalogue.
