MEMORY AS A DISOBEDIENT EXERCISE OF IDENTITY
In the work of Shadi Yousefian, we find the concept of displacement, understood as an artistic strategy that allows her to expand the boundaries of the pictorial and photographic to place it on the border of a new multidisciplinary territory. In some way, her artistic processes are similar to personal ones, as she has undergone a transformation of her identity as an immigrant, which places her in a constant mixing and overlapping of various elements.
The exhibition Estratos de la memoria (Memory in Layers) features 8 museographic cores that encompass production from 2002 to 2025. The tour of the solo exhibition by Yousefian is a thorough analysis of his work that allows us to immerse ourselves in her incessant search processes across various materials.
In Identidad abstracta 2025 (Abstract Identity), Yousefian touches upon the idea that there are many more nuanced factors that shape an identity than merely the place or culture that one comes from and that in daily interactions with other people, universal factors such as age, gender, race and characters of other people will influence and form one's own identity. In this series, by adding layers of colors and textures to the composite portraits made from collaged negatives printed on canvas, Yousefian is attempting to show the viewer that it is impossible to define or understand the true identity of a person with all of its complexity and fluidity.
Searching through family photographs is like finding the witnesses of memory; however, Yousefian modifies them as a reminder that memories are constructed between images and sensations that are completed and altered by longings and various emotions. In the series Obscurecido por la memoria 2024 (The obscured by colors), colorful patterns are present as abstract elements that provoke geometric order, contrasting with the photographic fragments that pose questions aimed at the future.
In the third series Recuerdos desvanecidos 2019 (Fading Memories), the action of obsessively fragmenting photographs of family, friends, and loved ones allows us to understand the process of uprooting by separating and dividing images as if opening a human body to extract thoughts and emotions to rename them. The strategies of appropriation are present by taking photographs that were not made by the author and altering them to give them new meaning, as an allegory to personal processes.
Pálido 2018 (Pallid) constitutes the fourth series where she explores, through written language, a way to visit her cultural heritage. We find a series of pieces where, by fragmenting books of Persian poetry and calligraphy, she alters the meaning of the words, allowing her to assign them new ones. The use of beeswax and epoxy resin creates a new barrier to clearly understanding what is written; however, this facilitates the charging of emotions and sensations. More than a procedure to obstruct the viewer, it is an opportunity to complete the piece, just as happens when recalling specific moments from our lives.
Traditionally, diaries are personal writings that record emotions, experiences, and perceptions of everyday events from a subjective and chronological perspective. They become an archive that, when consulted, brings back personal stories. In the series Diarios 2017 (Diaries), Yousefian again uses the strategy of fragmentation as a means to eliminate the written content and replace it with reflective material, so that the viewer, upon observing the work, becomes a part of it.
The series Memorias 2012-2021 (Memories) is a clear example of the author's research to transcend disciplinary boundaries into new territories. By appropriating photographs from her family albums, she manages to play with the idea of authorship, trimming them and preventing direct observation by covering them with semi-transparent materials and placing them in plastic bags, objectifying the image and questioning its origin.
A letter allows one to pause, reflect, and connect deeply with feelings. Choosing each word carefully is an exercise in introspection that organizes ideas we cannot express in any other way. Cartas 2006-2020 (Letters) is the seventh series where a reverse exercise is performed by selecting already written words to separate them from their original texts and encourage new readings. The texts are dismantled to reconfigure them from new realities.
Autorretrato 2002-2003 (Self-Portrait) serves as a tool to explore her identity as a way to shape her existence, her place in the world, and communicate her story. It is a testimony that the artist has of herself. A photographic portrait might lead us to assume the most faithful image to a person's physical appearance; however, the technical process of altering the negatives from an emotional intention transforms it into a powerful way of reinterpreting what was once captured by the camera, thus becoming an artistic statement.
Rodrigo Meneses