Alborz Kazemi: None Turned into Memory

Dastan’s Basement presents “None Turned into Memory", a solo exhibition of works by Alborz Kazemi. The exhibition opens on Friday 3 December 2021 and will be on view until Friday 17 December 2021. 

Alborz Kazemi (b. 1989) studied painting at Tehran’s School of Fine Arts. After his graduation, he became more interested in photography and cinema and most of his works have been photography-based. His works have been previously presented in Four solo shows and various group exhibitions in Iran and worldwide including Tehran National Sculpture Biennial in 2020. 

Kazemi has documented regional press in videos and photographs for years. As a documentarist he has lived with the belief that a photograph is a reference. Skeptical today of this referential hubris, he is now destroying and altering his negatives to reclaim emotions and experiences he feels is lost. Returning to images that he has been storing for years, he realized at some point that there is always a loss in the stutter of a photograph. The fact that a photograph flattens the world of things, its content is at the mercy of many outside forces, and finds new identity in its presentation casts doubt as to the nature of its referential status. In the current collection, Alborz Kazemi destroys and reconstructs his negatives to imbue them with feeling and sensibilities that they have forgotten.