Pendar Nabipour is a visual artist, independent curator, and art educator based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His main interests are common memories, collective decision-making, playfulness, humor, and nature. He studies the rethinking of established institutions and the ways of enabling initiatives to activate alternative structures, through artistic practice.
Rumor Camp - Following an invitation by Sign Groningen, Parhessia, and TimelineGallery, I participated in a project titled “Fear in Public Space”. The project started in 2018 with a series of lectures, talks and workshops at Academie Minevra in Groningen. Later, the participants formed small groups of artists to deliver urban intervention projects related to the topics from the sessions. Based on examples and discussions formed within the larger group, artists Angeliki Marina Diakrousi, Alice Strete, and I formed a small group to work and play around the idea of xenophobia. The format of the project turned out to become a city-wide rumor prank. During the campaign for the municipal election of 2018 in Groningen, we appropriated the name and logo of the local LET'S GRO festival, changing it into LET'M GRO. We spread stickers with pro-refugee slogans around the city and created the hashtag #letmgro on social media. This was part of our attempt to spread a rumor that a big refugee camp will be built in the neighboring Noorddijk area, within the current context of refugee settlements being pushed further outside the city, as well as the massive student accommodation crisis.
On the 17th and 18th of November 2018, we asked two Dutch speakers, actor Arminé Telimi and artist Klaas Koetje, to conduct interviews in the city center, as well as close to Noorddijk. Locals were asked what needs to be done politically in Groningen (with regard to the upcoming election), as well as their opinion on the supposable refugee camp, in the context of the housing crisis.
Forty - W139 art space was first squatted by a group of young artists in 1979. Later the group managed to buy the building, and the art space continued to flourish to be what it is now. The history of this building, and what has happened in it during the course of forty years is inspiring as it has hosted many artists throughout generations, and has provided space for the evolution of their practices, as well as room for experiments by remaining relatively an independent art space. On 22nd of November 2019, W139 opened its doors to visitors with “ampersands”, an exhibition celebrating forty years of W139. For this exhibition, I decided to work with the elements from the building itself. I focused on the two pillars in the space. The only unchanged objects which have been there since 1979 and standing tall in the middle of the big room. The concrete pillars have a specific shape that really interests me: a simple cylinder with a reversed triangular shape as the crown of the pillar, holding the ceiling.
Being invited to make a work that can reflect on the past, present, and the future of W139, while celebrating the 40th anniversary, I decided to make candles in the shape of the pillars. Candles burn to enlighten the path but also seize to exist while doing so. I chose candles thinking about sacrificing the representative object (the artwork) in order to save the real ones (the art space), which would be the two pillars holding the ceiling.
Conserving the Representation - Representative decision-making systems have been around for around eight hundred years. They have served us well, and have shaped what we today know as “democracy”. But, do they really work as efficiently in this era of ours as they did in the past? Do they really represent our multi-mega national public? Are they as pure and untainted as they are meant to be? I believe that corruption, lobbying, financial interest, power games have made the core of the representative system gradually obsolete. Are we not just conserving this presumably precious relic which we have created and held sacred for far too long and for far too much price?
In “Conserving the Representation”, the aim is to create a series of sculptures from the most influential, and most controversial parliament chambers from around the world. The chambers are printed in 3D and put inside of different glass containers, containing the most valued and popular alcoholic drink/liquor from that country, to be left for aging. There are three made so far. UK, NL, IT.
Conserving the Representation is a side project to Open Source Governance. ProjectOSG is a collective attempt to make it possible for the citizens and the members of a society to be able to take part in the structure of their government or society, directly through open-sourcing the legislation.
The first sculpture from the series is the chamber of House of Commons of UK submerged in gin. The sculpture has been exhibited at David and Goliath in Kunstplatform de Apotheek. The second one from the series is the Tweede Kamer (the Second Chamber of the States General), which is the lower house of the bicameral parliament of the Netherlands. The chamber is submerged in Jenever inside of a glass jar build by Vegla Inmaakglas company from the 60s. The third one from the series is Camera dei Deputati, the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of Italy. The chamber is submerged in Grappa, in a traditional Italian pickle jar.
This project has been generously supported by Stichting Stokroos and Fonds Kwadraat
EXPAT IMMIGRANT GATE - “Expat Immigrant Gate” was an interactive sculpture which functioned as the entrance to the exhibition “Ideology Meets Implementation”. The exhibition was held at W139 in Amsterdam between 13 October and 19 November 2017.
The initial idea of the gate was to create a situation in which the visitor has to select to enter the space either as an immigrant or as an expat. The aim was to evaluate how many people would empathize with each of the terms. The two revolving doors were equipped with counter sensors that would count the number of entrances.
The gate was additionally used for means of crowd separation during the exhibition. One example is with the work of Ehsan Fardjadniya in which he adopted a play by Berlot Brecht called “Pointed Heads and Rounded Heads”. Depending on which entrance the visitor would enter from, they would receive stamps on their hands marked either as a triangle for the pointed head, or a circle for the rounded head. During the different sessions of the performance, the behavior of the actors toward the visitors would depend on which stamp the visitor has.
Also, the choice of material of wooden ammunition boxes does relate with the work of Fardjadniya, in which he held the “Non-Fascist House”, at the exhibition. These wooden boxes were used as the structure of the exhibition and in the design of the whole exhibition. In the city of JAHA, where the play was happening, these boxes were made and capitalized as means of power control.
The western terminology dominates our global definitions. “Expat” and “Immigrant” are among those words which really do separate people depending on their social situations. One case of separation here is about the income. The specialist “foreigner” who works abroad, and earns a certain amount of money which is higher than medium, will be called an expatriate. This is the default definition of the word. However, in many cases, even if the foreigner does earn a certain amount of high income, they would still be called an immigrant, due to their appearances, or where they are coming from. So the definition does not really give a clear image and is rather racially charged. The work tries to focus both on the economic side, and the racial side of the terminology of expat and immigrant.
By the end of the exhibition, the counters marked 3867 of entrances for immigrant, and 1595 for expat.
EARTHEN PROVERBS / مَثَلهای خاکی - https://pendarnabipour.com/earthen-proverbs/
Extending a project that started in 2011 with the series ‘Waterlogged Proverbs / ضرب المثلهای آبدار ’ I started the making of a new series titled ‘Earthen Proverbs / ضرب المثلهای خاکی ‘. In a twenty years-long plan, the series are foreseen to also explore the other two elements of life, wind, and fire. These interactive sculptures/installations are based on Persian proverbs, as the most effective short forms of everyday linguistic packages that can interpret situations.
Looking back at the previous series, Earthen Proverbs started with a shift in the project’s form, space and its interaction scheme. In 2016 I was preparing to participate in Prospects & Concepts 2017 exhibition as a "Mondriaan Fond Young Talent" grantee, where I exhibited the first installation of the series, titled ‘Turned earthen, whoever lived on this earth / خاک شد آنکس که بر این خاک زیست ‘. The sculpture is an expandable installation. The interaction investigates the notions of life, death, and self-realization. The participant will experience modesty by kneeling or bending down in order to be able to see the image on the screen which is facing down and is showing the image of the participant’s bottom, through a camera installed behind the see-through mirror on top of the installation, looking down.
This work has also been selected and presented at “7th National Sculpture Biennial of Tehran”, and in “The Fox and the Grapes” in Kunstvereniging in Diepenheim, the Netherlands.
“WELCOME – NOT WELCOME” AT SCHMALL GALLERY - https://pendarnabipour.com/welcome-not-welcome-at-schmall-gallery/
Following an invitation from Schmall Gallery, I made a work using the gallery, exhibited April 11th - 18th, 2014 on Sint Jansstraat at the red light district of Amsterdam. Schmall Gallery is initiated by Doraan Schmall, which is basically a traveling tiny gallery that turns into something new each time it is exhibited.
The text from the work:
“In my opinion, there are three layers, stages or areas of personal space for each individual. The third and the grandest one is the public layer, which includes the majority of the audiences and common encounters of an individual with them. It is where anybody who meets the person can enter and be a temporary visitor. The middle one relates to relationships. It includes usually two individuals (sometimes a few more) and their internal codes, mutual trust, joint memories, and their ways of encountering with the third stage. And for the first stage, it includes only the inner voice of the individual. It is a much smaller layer where the person looks through at the other two, in order to capture the world outside and interact with it. This stage relies on the knowledge, memories, and experiences from the other two stages, but stays carefully hidden and safe with the inner voice.
Roland Barthes introduced Punctum in order to read photographs and to be stung by the sharp tip of the mesmerizing contents of a special image. Punctum may be one of the few bridges to connect the first stage to the other two because as a photograph, the mysterious subject is visually visible to see, and to deal with.
The stories behind the roots of this gallery, and also the story of the image behind the hesitating doors of it, may not be narrated for all, neither may they be necessarily needed to be told, but they can act as bridges to connect the stages to one another, for only the memory remains.”
With special thanks to Cathelijn and Gijsje for welcoming us into there space for the opening.
LIFE IS NOT THAT PAINFULLY FAST - With this collection of short videos, I am planning to investigate the speed of life, and how can we enjoy gazing into nature by simply being a part of it, rather than overcoming it. This project started in 2012 and is ongoing.
All films: https://pendarnabipour.com/life-is-not-that-painfully-fast-series/
SELL ME A JOKE - SELL ME A JOKE
Aiming at public intervention with regards to humor and economy as a tool to trade humanity, in the first effort in Arnhem Central Station on February 2012, I tried to buy some jokes from people at the station for 20 cents each. I called people for conversation and asked them if they had any joke to sell to me.
After my first attempt at this project, I decided to continue this project from a different angle. This time instead of approaching people for asking for jokes, I appeared in Utrecht central station on March 2012 with a box with me saying “Will pay you 20 cents for listening to each joke”.
DEAR NOSTALGIA - My performance presentation at Dutch Art Institute on 20 June 2012.
DO & DON’T - Do and Don’t project is a series of urban interventions that me and my cousin and dear friend, Amirali Garousian have conducted in 2012 and 2013 in Tehran. In this series, we are working with the idea of using slogans to tell people what to do and what not to do (like a traffic sign), while we are trying to choose short and simple messages to express the current concerns within the society. The aim is to calm down the crowd with direct and soothing orders and sometimes unifying messages. In the first attempt, which has happened in Tehran during my visit in May 2012 (after I left Iran in 2011), we chose a slogan saying: Don’t worry. It is regarded as the economic and political situation of Iran at that time. I should mention that this sign has been stuck on the original sign of STOP on the roads in three different locations in Tehran at night time. During the second attempt next year, we raised another message saying "be human" (or be more humane).
