Against Communal Amnesia

Abstract

َ”Against Communal Amnesia” is a counter-monumental project for us to resist the forgetfulness of what we've done throughout history. The most notable examples of traumatic history for me are in my country and home; the stories that I grew up with as a child. I was born after the 1979 revolution in Iran. The Revolution generated organized crimes against different groups of people, primarily by the religious and extremist Islamic members of the population. On some sites I was a witness. In one of the locations, Azadi Square, I witnessed people being shot and killed, their lifeless bodies moved backward to a safer part of the crowd on the protesters' hands. I saw the silent demonstrations turn into a massacre. I witnessed a cycle of violence and saw a sniper burned by protesters in response to the death of their companions. Another example of our communal trauma is the Ukrainian flight that was shot by two IRGC missiles in 2019. My flight to Canada was on the exact same plane one month before this catastrophe. It was a national disaster for Iranians, Canadians, and Ukrainians and deep personal grief for myself because of the closeness I felt to the victims of that incident. Consequently, I used those stories to create this counter-monumental project.