ZAHRA KOMEYLIAN
WATER OVER MARSH (2022)
TWO PASSAGES (2021)
RECIPES FOR RADICAL REST AND SLOWNESS (2020)
GROUNDWORK (2020)
NOTHING IS A HOLE IN ITS OWN SKIN (2020)
CONTAINER FOR A PRECARIOUS RECORD (2019)
PLACES WHERE THINGS HAD BEEN PUT BECAUSE THEY HAD BEEN VIOLENTLY DISPLACED, AND PLACES WHERE THINGS FOUND THEIR NATURAL GROUND AND STABILITY (2018- 2019)
ABOUT/ CV
Container for a Precarious Record
Solo presentation at Xpace Cultual Centre, Toronto, April 2019. Documentation by Polina Teif
“The memory foam is reminiscent of domesticity and one’s negotiation with the institution of family. Komeylian identifies a paradoxical relationship to the foam, “the foam cloaks, protects, and cushions, but also suffocates in a slow and insidious manner.” Laid under the body, memory foam is a place of rest and comfort. The bedding holds the body’s fatigue, fragility and subsistence, and in its softness stunts pain. Conversely, the pain is causal of the institution of family as it conditions the body... Underneath these institutional pressures, the body succumbs to a paralysis or slow movement. It also negotiates within its internal spaces: within the marrow, within the spine, it contemplates movement against that which is pressing onto it.” excerpt from Exhibition essay by Marina Fathalla.
Container for a precarious record explores the propensity of wax as a material for record-keeping. This work examines the internalized disciplines and postures of the viscera and limbs, shaped by the discursive institutional forces acted upon the social body. Utilizing process-based intervention with performance ephemera, found metal, and text, this work is a meditation on the tensions produced and augmented by the body’s negotiation with agency and docility, safety and containment.
how do these containers relate to those containers? Text imprint on repurposed wax, dusted with soil and rust from found metal “Wax tablets sit on hot-rolled metal shelving at the periphery of the room, comprised of remelted wax detritus from the performative act. As an excess of the material, these pieces call us to consider the embodied conditioning retained in the material memory of the wax over time. The prose stamped onto the wax surface leaves a light trace as a palimpsest, subject to rewriting. The palimpsest is a surface that has been defaced after writing, but traces of the previous marks are still visible on the surface. Making its presence only slightly known, the prose gives semblance of appearing and disappearing. The words are a meditation of simultaneously surfacing and repressed, semi-conscious internal murmurs that emerge from an undefined or subconscious space. They surface and float on the plane of the muted material of the wax slabs.”
there is a wall of boxes where I keep my sleeping limbs
This project was made possible by generous support from the Ontario Arts Council and Chalmers Family Fund.