Bita Razavi

(2011)
A collaboration with Jaakko Karhunen
video Installation (color, sound)
original certificate of marriage (framed)
original certificate of applying for Finnish residence permit
duration of the video 5' 7'' (loop)
original Language: English and Finnish

Courtesy of the artist and the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma

The video shows the artist getting married in her working studio in Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. The studio is built to resemble the official marriage room of the registration office in Helsinki where people have half an hour time to get married with presence of two witnesses. The video deals with the theatrical aspect of a wedding ceremony by using different elements like lighting, movement of the camera and the expressions of the performers -who are playing a familiar act but in an unfamiliar situation. This focus on theatricality and the switch between documentary and fictitious style of the video raises the question of the validity of the marriage and the motivation behind it which is answered in the work itself by two framed documents that are mounted on the wall in the same space. One document is the original marriage certificate of the artist issued in May 2011 and the other one is a certificate of applying for Finnish residence permit in 2011.

Wedding Speech by Ray Langenbach

(2016)
Series of 14 framed photographs
inkjet prints
size: 60 x 40 cm

These series of photographs explore the rising xenophobia in eastern Europe with the arrival of the new wave of refugees in 2015. The project also investigates the xenophobic nationalism in relation with the succession of national traumas of historic proportions in the region.  In eastern Europe, where borders were frequently redrawn, the nation is still widely seen as an ethnic/cultural entity rather than a political one, and cultural and ethnic homogeneity is regarded as an asset that helps to prevent the disintegration of the state.

Pictures from Our Future, explores what acts or visual elements in the way I appear in public put me in the category of “the other”. The idea of this series was born out of a situation in which I was referred to as “the picture of Estonia's future” by a young man passing by in Tartu, when Estonia was forced to accept 500 Syrian refugees.

Pictures from our past shows abandoned houses in former soviet union countries. During and long after World War II, millions in the region have sought to escape from oppression and genocide left their houses behind. Why have European countries forgotten that many of their own citizens were once refugees?

(2015)
Series of video documented interviews
Color, sound
Original language: Finnish and English

Commissioned by Checkpoint Helsinki

Bita Razavi’s Some Critique from Our Parents comprises a series of videos, exploring the relationships between artists and their parents. It is based on interviews with the parents of artists, in which the parents discuss their perceptions of their children’s work and creative pursuits.

Parents form an inevitable and very particular part of an artist’s audience. They are at once intimate associates but also art world outsiders who often fail to understand the professional language used, and implicitly understood, by the artists themselves. Razavi’s idea for the project comes from her own struggle to communicate her work to her parents and the struggle for choosing the right language to address different audiences with different works.

Some Critique from Our Parents draws on the experiences of the parents of artists to explore in greater detail the relationships existing between artists and their audiences and between parents and children as well as addressing the challenges of human communication more broadly. The project, commissioned by Checkpoint Helsinki, includes Razavi's interviews with the parents of four Finnish artists; Jani Leinonen, Tero Nauha, Mimosa Pale and Minna Henriksson.

(2012)
video, color, silent
duration 3:07
 

The original video was recorded in Istanbul in April 2011, It was called "Bosphorus: a trilogy“.
The video showed Istanbul from behind the shoulders of tourist couples in Bosphorus. 
It had three parts and each part had three stories; 
the story of the couple, the story of Istanbul in the background and the story of the reflections in the window. 
The original video was confiscated in Tehran by the police of Islamic guidance on Feb.18th 2012.
There is only few more seconds of the original video available to us.
The original artist was detained in Iran on the same day.
The current video has been made by someone else, it doesn't matter who.
It has been ordered by the original artist through a phone call from the police car.

(2012)
In collaboration with Lauri Wuolio and Eeva Peura
Exhibition/designed space
 

The Waiting Room is an exhibition/ designed space which exposes our society's underlying attitudes towards waiting. Time is perceived as economical resource and its consumption is being constantly optimized, if not minimized to zero. Information seems to move faster and with less effort, but at the same time people complain they have less and less time for themselves and each other.
Regardless of all temporal parsimony, there are still places designated for waiting, such as airport lobbies or social office waiting halls. These places are often experienced as depressing or at least extremely boring, that provide almost none entertainment for themodern hyperactive mind.
In an excessively accelerated world waiting itself has become almost a performative event full of meanings, and yet we fail to see it as a platform for recreational activities. The Waiting Room raises questions about our perception of time and aversion to waiting.