Artist Highlight - Zizi Vakili

1. Tar e Solidarity comes from the emotional condition of living away from Iran during conflict, protest, and communication blackouts. How did distance shape the way this work began?

Distance was the starting point of the work. During moments of conflict, protest, and blackout in Iran, I felt suspended between two realities: physically away, but emotionally constantly pulled back. At the same time, I witnessed how Iranians outside Iran came together, trying to stand beside one another and beside people inside Iran, even from a distance. This was the moment when solidarity became very present for me. Tar e Solidarity began from that tension: separation, helplessness, care, and the fragile but powerful need to remain connected.

2. You use embroidery and textile materials often associated with care and domestic memory. What made them feel appropriate for holding fear, waiting and interrupted contact?

Textile felt appropriate because it already carries the language of touch, care, and memory. For me, it was also deeply connected to Iranian culture: carpets, fabrics, colours, and domestic objects that many Iranians carry in their memories, whether inside or outside Iran. I found the roots of this solidarity in those shared cultural memories. Embroidery was important because it is slow and repetitive; it requires patience, attention, and time. That slowness felt close to waiting from far away. Textile allowed me to hold care, fear, rupture, and connection in one material.

3. The installation is made of seven standing textile forms. Do you think of them as individual bodies, fragments, witnesses, or something else?

I see them as individual bodies that together create a collective body. Each of the seven forms has its own posture, damage, tension, and character, but they are not complete when seen only alone. Their meaning becomes stronger when they stand beside one another. For me, this reflects how people can be different, fragile, or wounded, but when they stand side by side, they create solidarity. The seven forms are bodies, fragments, and witnesses at the same time, but together they become one shared presence.

4. Some fragments seem to fall away, held only by a single thread. Is that thread a sign of fragility, hope, obligation or memory?

For me, the thread contains fragility, memory, and loss at the same time. The fallen fragments are like parts of ourselves that we lose through pain, fear, distance, or change. They are no longer fully part of us in the same way, but they are still connected because they once belonged to us. Different experiences impact us and transform who we are; losing something does not mean it disappears completely. The single thread holds that relationship between what is lost and what still remains attached through memory.

5. The installation speaks about solidarity, but not as something simple or complete. What kind of solidarity interests you here?

I am interested in a solidarity that is not perfect, simple, or romantic. For me, solidarity can also come from fear, pain, distance, and the need to hold each other when things feel unstable. It is not about everyone becoming the same, but about different people, with different wounds and memories, choosing to stand beside one another. In this work, solidarity is fragile and incomplete, but still powerful. It is something that has to be held, repaired, and continued.

6. Light is included in the material language of the work. How does illumination change the emotional weight of the textiles?

The light in the work is very dim and slowly pulsing. For me, it feels like breathing: the quiet lives of Iranian people continuing through fear, hopeless moments, and uncertainty. It is not a bright or heroic light, but something fragile that keeps appearing and disappearing. This pulse gives the textile forms a sense of life, as if something inside them is still alive, still resisting, still holding on. The light carries both vulnerability and hope; it makes the work feel wounded, but not completely silent.