An Exhibition for My Friend
(2008-9)
A collaboration with Orr Menirom
photo prints, postal packages
two-channel video installation (color, sound)
exhibition posters and agreement
An Exhibition for My Friend is a one year long collaborative project with Israeli artist Orr Menirom. In this work we examined the political relation between Iran and Israel by showing its effects on our personal lives as two schoolmates and friends from the two countries. The starting point of the work was my discovery that Orr didn’t know that as an Israeli she was not allowed travel to Iran, or that Iran does not recognize Israel as a country meaning Israel doesn’t exist in the maps printed in Iran and Iranian athletes are not allowed to compete against Israeli counterparts in international competitions.
We documented our conversations in five one hour long sessions and as we established the impossibility of traveling between the two countries, we decided to create the experience of being in a forbidden space for one another by sending visual materials that would pass the closed borders of the two countries through a third country; borders that are even closed to postal packages. Later we exchanged our names and showed our works in two exhibitions in each other’s countries. The exhibitions we held in Iran and Israel for each other were the first solo exhibitions for both of us.