(…) The fieraas digiiv only the terrestrial tombs of the earth (…) “Read in a low voice, quickly and with tenderness, each letter, syllable or silence, each gap” suggests Shirin Salehi (Tehran, 43 years old) from the first pages of The past (in) is a prologue. An artist’s book which seeks to convey, through the upheavals of words, the immense pain and deep sadness felt by Iranian women. Since this shared pain, the author, who arrived in Spain at the age of 17, wants to find a subtle space of interlocution in which she can poetically express this internal duel although it is an inevitably political question when she comes from a country like Iran.
Salehi is a visual artist, teacher, translator and performer who collaborates with several organizations on an accommodation program for Persian-speaking asylum seekers. This project was born from her experiences and her own feelings, which created a chorus of voices and texts to tell of the difficulties many women face in expressing the pain they carry within them. “There is something that blocks them and prevents them from speaking clearly,” he comments in an emotional tone. “Despite empathy, it is difficult to feel the pain of others. »
His interest in poetry and language, present in his visual work since 2016, led him to write a series of “broken poems” which constitute the heart of the book. To compose these intimate and evocative texts I decided to break down the words by pronouncing them out loud, intertwining Persian and Castellan Spanish, to merge them in the form of extraño chatter and onomatopoeic moans which give birth to a new language, according to their words. Son vservices that generate proximity and compassion from abroad. So, by trying to take away the emotion of the sounds, I was able to transcribe this pain. “I had it inside.”
“Broken poems take on meaning from the extrañeza through oral language and repetition for which it is necessary to advance in reading aloud and in a quiet place to sit on the skin of the one who speaks,” insists the artist.
Throughout this poetic fiction, the protagonists wonder if forgetting soothes pain (…) elodiv he in the avilia take you to ná da (…), If so much pain can be expressed somehow (…) illdieldolordidie asks you questions! (…) or if the speech problems are due to a physical dysfunction. It is perhaps the “inflammation of sadness” which prevents them from expressing themselves and when the blockage is total, they sing internally, without moving their lips. “The han stole the deepest part of your being. The han kidnapped the language.” (…) mileng á a ua gua ma (…)
To give shape to this artistic project, he counted on the collaboration of Valeria Mata for the epilogue and Marina Meyer for the design. The result, 36 pages measuring 18 x 30 cm. on paper Sirio beads envelopes with a folder with the same characteristics as a cover, in short, direct to the essence of the story it hides. Where empty pages evoke silent texts, according to the author. A book full of subtleties, published by the Fuga gallery, in which a single letter has a voice and a high number serves as a reference to follow the brief narration written on the page that accompanies the broken poems. A few paragraphs which present the report in the fall of 2022, when the case of the young Kurdish-Iranian Jina Mahsa Amini broke out.
A book in which Shirin Salehi gathers all that pain to hold its place, embrace it and care for it until it reaches “where the duel lives” and keeps moving forward from there. ¡Ey vay!
“The past (in) is a prologue.” Shirin Salehi. Artist’s book. Limited edition of 100 copies. Fuga Gallery, 2025. 75 euros. The artist will create a performative reading of the book on December 11 at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Complutense University of Madrid.
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