[Moving] Image

"The new age will be an age less masculine and more permeated with the feminine ideals." 'Abdu'l-Bahá

A photographic survey of visual poetry exploring the Artists language and story of home; a multisensory poem exploring the fragility and elusiveness of place and experience, capturing the poignancy of memory and association integral to the understanding of loss or displacement.

Golden Dreams

Perth Centre of Photography | 20 May – 1 July 2023 | Presented with Perth Centre of Photography. Supported by the Forrest Research Foundation, Spaced, Victoria Park Community Centre and the University of Western Australia.

Through fragmented and poetic imagery, the artist highlights the paradox of survival and healing, inviting a critical discussion surrounding empathy, trust, custodianship, compassion, and social change. The artist engaged in an extensive period of reflective and collaborative practice with the community (2018 onwards) to create this body of work.

Through film, sound, the archival, performance, gesture, reflective process and collaborative practice, the Artist engaged through an extensive period of empathic artmaking with community, internal and beyond, over the last five years. Each work drawing her close to understanding the meaning and universality of home. ​

Courtesy of Artist & PCP

a love letter to the Nightingale

Goolugatup Heathcote, 20 April – 2 June 2024

The artwork is a dedication and love letter to the daughters of the artist’s mother’s homeland, inviting viewers to explore how feminine approaches such as nurture and empathy can be harnessed to mediate grief, disconnection, and discomfort through magical realism, expanded cinema, video art and photography. ‍

Photography Dan McCabe ‍

Exhibitions includes The Great Reveal, Lawson Flats, curated by Annika Kristensen 2023, MOORE CONTEMPORARY 2021. ‍

Photographic survey catalogue available on request eeshraghian@hotmail.com. ‍

Catalogue Essay 

Goolugatup Heathcote

The new age will be an age less masculine and more permeated with the feminine ideals. – ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

Catalogue Essay 

Written by Asha Kiani

Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson is an award-winning, Iranian-Australian researcher, director, and video artist. She was born and raised as a second-generation Australian after her grandparents and parents fled the Iranian revolution of 1979, making the journey to Western Australia as refugees. Both her family heritage and strong connection to the land and waterways of Boorloo (Perth) form an intriguing band of threads that weave her identity and inform her craft. During her extensive studies at The University of Western Australia [MFA, 2022; BDes (Fine Arts, First Class Honours), 2018; BDes (Fine Arts & Integrated Design) 2017], Eshraghian-Haakansson found home in video art – a medium in which she has established the perfect creative language to connect her viewers with the stories she gives voice to.

Embodying a passion and core value for community arts, in 2021, Eshraghian-Haakansson co-founded The Second Generation Collective alongside multi-disciplinary artist, Asha Kiani. Together they use the arts to bridge intergenerational gaps, navigate trauma and advocate for communal care. In their first major collaborative work, the artists led a collective of Iranian-Australian youth and elders to share their stories through creative practices, culminating in Àvàreh & Found, a three-week multi-modal exhibition that encapsulated the push and pull between displacement and home, heritage and belonging shared by the participants. Via this connection to community, Eshraghian-Haakansson has been able to solidify her tenets as a video artist, emphasizing agency within the narratives of lived experience, empathy, and the potency of legacy. 

Both her research and creative work are grounded in communal and collaborative social practice as she aims to navigate the post-memory of community through the poetics of the moving image. Using trauma-informed, therapeutic approaches, Eshraghian-Haakansson navigates the emotional complexities of love and pain found within inherited stories, history, and the feminine portrait. She invites viewers to become the ‘witness’ rather than the ‘passive bystander’, facilitating a critical discussion around empathy, custodianship, compassion, and social change.

Consistent with her previous major works, Eshraghian-Haakansson’s latest masterpiece, a love letter to the Nightingale is yet another stunning presentation of the essence of her exploration into love, isolation, separation, reunion, the eternal journey of seeking home in place, space, time or another. This work is a multisensory poem exploring the fragility and elusiveness of place and experience. It aims to capture the poignancy of memory and association which are integral to understanding loss or displacement. Through fragmented and poetic imagery, the artist highlights the paradox of survival and healing, particularly through the feminine lens.

To create this work, Eshraghian-Haakansson engaged in an extensive period of reflective and collaborative practices with groups representing both the Iranian-Australian community as well as those on the edges of crisis, accessing community centre support in broader local Australian suburbia. Via magical realism, expanded cinema, video art and photography, the work is a dedication and love letter to the women who, for the artist, have served as a symbol of survival and strength in the face of forced displacement- be it from their own body, from place or their identity. She wishes to invite viewers to explore how magical realism and feminine portrayals of nurture and empathy can be harnessed to mediate grief, disconnection, and discomfort. Drawing on the writings of the Bahá’í Faith, Eshraghian-Haakansson uses her medium to explore the concept: “The new age will be an age less masculine and more permeated with the feminine ideals.” – ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. 

As each viewer comes to participate in the work via sensory immersion, they relax into a mesmerizing world of ethereal imagery. Inspired by Persian miniature paintings and mythology, Eshraghian-Haakansson layers high-quality photography of contemporary sights, objects and figures with classic, elegant digital ornamentation to make for a unique aesthetic. A notable portrayal of this is her imposing of a beautiful winged female figure, mid-motion onto the velvety graphics of her digital work to marry the familiarity of reality with the mystique of an imaginary landscape, a larger-than-life, most perfect backdrop.

As with all her works, whilst the video art takes a key role in the experience, every detail in the exhibition space is thought out with used, found, symbolic elements carefully placed to add to the experience. Traditional Persian carpet lining the floor allows for a sense of entering a home, perhaps that of a family. This subtly ties the work to place and time for the artist while remaining neutral or perhaps even ‘unknown’ for the participant. The still imagery mounted on the walls captures stories, each within themselves, allowing for both subjective reception and thematic relevance. 

Also following suit in her previous works is the use of archival imagery that effortlessly draws the viewer into nostalgia, memory, sorrow, and catharsis. A still image taken from old VHS footage of Eshraghian-Haakansson’s grandmother sharing an intimate moment with her as an infant, the depth of which can be felt- it could be anyone’s mother, grandmother with them. In this she draws the viewer to feel their humanity, to join in to communal humanity. An assortment of still images of two faceless lovers, still, yet in motion- the push and pull of love, of finding home in another. The images capture such a beauty, such emotion, curated in her unique, recognisable form, paying homage to the daughters of her mother’s homeland.

Thoughtfully guided by Eshraghian-Haakansson’s mystical creative vision and attention to aesthetic detail, a love letter to the Nightingale reaches new heights in her growing body of works. This exhibition is yet another elegant exploration into what it means to be human- to love, grieve, despair, and find hope- a graceful, emotional, enigmatic experience…a golden dream.

 

Cinematic Snapshot

"in Search"

20 May – 1 July 2023 | Perth Centre of Photography | as part of GOLDEN DREAMS Exhibition. A series of photographic cinematic stills from Áshená, Bear Witness To Me, 2021 ​

in search of Her, 2021, matte laminate, aluminium subframe, 21cm x 15cm Ed. of 2 + AP

in search of Other, 2021, matte laminate, aluminium, subframe, 21cm x 15cm Ed. of 2 + AP

within search, 2021, matte laminate, aluminium subframe, 21cm x 15cm Ed. of 2 + AP

in search, 2021, matte laminate, aluminium subframe, 21cm x 15cm Ed. of 2 + AP

Golden Dreams Photographic Book, 2023