Alireza Abbasy

artistiek onderzoek - performance - audiovisueel - spoken word - schrijven

Alireza Abbasy (1981, Tehran) is a Rotterdam-based interdisciplinary artist, writer and curator. Apart from his education and career in art, he has a solid background in Engineering. He received his PhD in Technology Management (2012) from Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherland. He holds a Master in Fine Arts (2019) from AKV St. Joost, Den Bosch, the Netherlands. Alireza is the founder and editor of Sarmad Platform.


Collective Contemplation #Prospects 2023 - Three Collective Contemplation sessions during Prospects 2023 were held together with Ying Liu. The first session honours the women-led Jina revolution in Iran, best known for the slogan “Woman-Life- Freedom”. The 2nd session is done together with guests from Rainbow Soulclub initiative in Amsterdam. And in the third session, invited artists currently exhibiting work at Prospects joined us.
Book Launch – Sarmad Fiction Writing Club 2022 Anthology - The launch of the second annual anthology of the Fiction Writing Club, held in December 2023 in Rotterdam. The book contains the written works of fiction of 22 (visual) artists/writers, selected from two rounds of the club in 2022.
Sarmad Fiction Club – 2021 Anthology - In 2021, I initiated and curated the project Sarmad Fiction Writing Club at Sarmad Platform. This is a club for (visual) artists who would like to write fiction as part of their artistic practice. In each round of this non-hierarchical community, each member can submit a piece of "flash fiction" (any fictional story under 600 words). The stories are collected and shared with all club members, who would read them and vote for their favorite works. The works with the highest votes receive a prize. This is an ongoing project and we just published the first anthology of the club in Dec 2021.
Black Mama - Installation, Dimension: 6 x 3.5 x 2 m Material: Building foil (Polyethylene), solidified luminescent paint, uv torch Ruimte Caesuur, Middelburg Black Mama was an installation which intends to engage with darkness, as a healing force, as the alternative reality in which the solid self disappears and the individual is relieved of the paralyzing grip of the mind. This work is inspired by the work of Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, author, artist and ordained Zen priest. The writings in this installation are free translations (into Persian, Chinese and Dutch) of passages from two of her books, “Opening to darkness”, 2023 and “The deepest peace: contemplations from a season of stillness”, 2020. The meditative quality of the act of manual translation into our mother tongues played a crucial role in the development of this work.
Eyn Eyn Eyn Fables - a sheet from the publication Eyn Eyn Eyn Fables, a collection of 4 illustrated fictional fables on the "self", stillness and slowness, using anthropomorphised characters such as clouds, snails and a spider. Eyn Eyn Eyn is the pseudonym I use in the fictional stories I write as part of my practice.
Toilet Paper-Heads - Toilet paper-head is a video project which was started after the beginning of the corona crisis and all the madness that ensued in supermarkets, almost everywhere in this world. Toilet paper-head is a non-fictional character who dances, reads, meditates, plays football, meets up with his friends and hugs trees. In addition to the social layer, this work, by being filmed in a non-conventional way using a camera obscura, proposes a fluid and alternative visual language fundamentally different from the dominant aesthetic dictated by the photography industry.
a collection of publications of my works of fiction
Mark the Nails - Site-specific work at "...ism Project Space" in Den Haag, as part of the exhibition Collective Contemplation. The 17th century building, renovated many times, embodies the traces of several generations. In this work, I marked all the nails that I could find in the floor and on the walls of the building. More than 500 nails were marked. The concept of the exhibition was "motional meditation" (as opposed to "sitting meditation), to silence the mind and abandon the artistic "self", by constantly and repetitively engaging with a material.
Collective Contemplation – harvest - In the second session of Collective Contemplation, I used house plants as my working material and collected their seeds from two different flowsers for one hour. In Collective Contemplation, the focus is on creating artwork not by the analytical mind but as a byproduct of a process of abandoning the mind. Each artist performs "motional meditation" by interacting with a certain material for one hour.
Toilet-Paper-Heads publication - Toilet-paper-heads was made for and exhibited at MAMA Rotterdam, as part of the exhibition "Fiction-ing Comfort" Jun-Sep 2020. In addition to the video, this work included a book of text and illustrations, which introduces 8 toilet-paper-head characters. The text was written by Alireza Abbasy and the illustrations by Golnar Abbasi. The booklet was published by Sarmad Platform.