Self as Water, Water as Mirror — Sanaz Mazinani in Conversation with Golzar Yousefi

This artist talk explores the ideas and experiences that shaped Sanaz Mazinani’s installation Self as Water, Water as Mirror, inviting audiences to reflect on how direct experience and reoriented perception can promote greater empathy and collective responsibility. The conversation offers insight into the role of fanā (annihilation in the divine, or dissolution of the self) in the exhibition and cyclical renewal in Mazinani’s practice.

Reflecting on themes of visibility and disappearance, as well as pattern and perception, the discussion considers how moments of rupture, like the disorienting effects of mirror-mosaic (āyeneh-kārī) and the cosmic experience of a total solar eclipse, can open spaces for transformation, self-knowledge, and reconnection, encouraging alternative ways of relating to one another and to the world. »

This talk is conducted in English.

Detail of the triptych: « From Geometric to Organic » (AI-Generated Images vs. Lens-Based Photography), 2023, from the series « An Impossible Perspective ». Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Bulger Gallery.