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Helia Chitsazan (b. 1995, Tehran, Iran). Having earned her BFA in Painting from the Art University of Tehran in 2018, Helia Chitsazan relocated to New York City and obtained an MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in 2023. Chitsazan’s artwork has been showcased in various painting festivals in Iran and she participated in group shows at New Collectors Gallery (New York, 2021), Thierry Goldberg Gallery (New York, 2023), Pablo’s Birthday Gallery (New York, 2023), and LAbeast gallery (Los Angeles, 2023). She was awarded the 1st painting grant from Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation (Montreal, Canada). After Midnight – Chitsazan’s show at Fou Gallery (2023) signifies the debut of her artistic career, marking her inaugural solo exhibition.
Photos by Annie Lingfei Ren©Helia Chitsazan, courtesy of Fou Gallery
Artist and Curator in Conversation: Helia Chitsazan and Nina Chkareuli-Mdivani discussing Forces of Memory and Change, on view at Fou Gallery, New York through December 22, 2024
Memory is updated every day by changes we experience; we change it as we go. The discipline of painting is thus a perfect place to record these updates. One puts a brushstroke, one adds to it, or one erases by adding another brushstroke to build up a color. Or a feeling. There is nothing linear in this process, although eventually, all brushstrokes lead to a specific objective as is in Helia Chitsazan’s case.
Curatorially and textually, the exhibition is connected to similar dynamic forces of change and memory. On the one hand, we have memory as translated through what Hal Foster calls the archival trajectory of art (Joachim Koester and Tacita Dean being the best representatives). Archival art investigates might-have-beens. On the other hand, we have fluidity brought by life lived and individual changes we have experienced. Both are channeled through our cultural identity, and the way we look at cultural tradition is framed by our background. In the case of Helia Chitsazan’s new body of work, we decided to let it breathe here, in space, but also to hold space for her own story. Story of immigration, power of a gaze, masks, Iranian culture, and loss of it.
Nina Chkareuli-Mdivani: Works in this exhibition have a haunting, eerie sensibility. Is this intensity an inherent characteristic of your practice, or is it a new element that showed up here through masks, doppelgangers, and strangely greening figures?
Helia Chitsazan: I would say a psychological aspect has always been present in my work, giving it an ambiguous and mysterious quality. That has usually been something I was interested in, but there’s a shift in this series of works that started naturally and intuitively. I see this change connected to my experience of immigration, an experience that is deeply personal and varies for different people. In my case, and perhaps for other immigrants from Iran or countries with similar circumstances, immigration isn’t just a pursuit of a better life. In some cases, it becomes less of a choice and more of a necessity. Although I’m aware of the privileges of having this option, it leaves one with a sense of loss.
Metaphorically I would describe it as death and rebirth. At a certain point, you realize that on top of all the people, places, and attachments, you’ve left behind you need to let go of parts of yourself. You’re compelled to construct a new identity because the tools you once relied on no longer fit the reality of your new circumstances.
Gradually, I noticed that the faces in my paintings began to look like masks or statues, and they were losing their vitality. At this point, I had to question why this was happening, and I had to decide whether I wanted to keep the faces and let this transformation happen or try to bring them back to life. In the end, I found this change interesting and wanted to explore it more sometimes through masks specifically created for this purpose. This new element added a haunting, ghostly quality to the work.
NCM: As a young Iranian woman living outside of the country for the last three years how would you position your practice in feminist terms? Who are the women in your paintings – what are their dreams, hopes, and fears?
HC: Being far away leads you to experience all the emotions and events related to your homeland virtually. This means that you’ll be able to understand the happiness and grief, the fear and hope, but you won’t be able to fully live it or feel it with your body. In other words, your brain experiences the emotion, but your body won’t.
In 2022, the women’s life freedom movement started to happen after the death of Mahsa(Jina) Amini, who was arrested by the Iranian government forces for not correctly wearing a mandatory hijab. This movement became one of the most meaningful events that I experienced in my life so far. I spent most of my time on the phone trying to get as close as possible to those who were using their bodies to fight against equality and justice. I was feeling guilty that I wasn’t there with them. watching their presence, their power, and their grief made me experience the trauma that I grew up with once again. I reflected on the one consistent answer to it all—resistance—and the hope and strength it brings.
Experiencing such deep emotions through a virtual frame without being physically involved made me think about the power of gaze as a way of resistance. When I was younger, walking the streets of Tehran often made me feel unsafe or threatened due to verbal harassment and the heaviness of their stare at me. Over time, I learned that if I directly looked back at the person harassing me, they would often become intimidated. That direct look had a message: I am alive, I can react, I can defend myself.
I find the gaze one of the most powerful means of expression. Your voice can be silenced, your body can be restricted, but your gaze cannot. It’s simple, subtle, powerful, and striking to me. In my works, I want to depict this resistance. The women in the works have strong gazes, they are restless, and they have heaviness on their shoulders, but there is resistance and hope in their eyes. Employing a mask, sometimes covering the faces of my characters, is another method I tried to emphasize the power of gaze in my work. The eyes become the only part of the face that is capable of expression.
NCM: Change and memory play an integral part in this exhibition, how do you as an individual, as a woman, as an Iranian, as a New Yorker, and as an artist assimilate or fight these two opposing and yet integrally connected forces?
HC: Since I moved away from Iran, one thing has significantly changed in my practice: I’ve found myself gradually moving away from reality and closer to the imagination. Before, I was deeply inspired by the present moment. I was interested in working from life: sitting in front of a person, trying to capture their essence—their reality. That process excited me because I could feel familiar with people, I could relate to them, and make a deep connection between me, the subject, and the work.
After I left Iran, however, I began to experience a sense of rootlessness and non-belonging. The inner world of my mind now feels more familiar and tangible than the external one. That led me to look back at my memories and my dream to find something that feels familiar to connect to that. I gradually started using my imagination to create paintings.
Yet, the imagination world and memory itself are fluid and constantly shifting, which makes it both exciting and challenging to work with. In my practice, I find myself searching for fragments of memory and imagination, trying to connect them to the part of me that exists in the present moment—a part that has inevitably changed over the past three years and will continue to evolve.
Through this process of back and forth, I aim to create a solid, new reality—one that bridges the image of my past, the roots that shaped me, and the needs of my present self. It’s a dynamic and unpredictable process, like solving a puzzle without knowing what the final picture will look like. This interplay between change and memory becomes the foundation of my work, reflecting my ongoing efforts to make this connection between who I was, who I am, and who I am becoming.
NCM: Where do you see yourself as an artist in five years? What will you be painting? Where would you live?
HC: I don’t usually imagine a clear goal or image for the future. What I like to do is to draw a path and see where it goes, that makes it more exciting to me. The main lines of my path are to keep working and to keep finding inspiration. I’d like to travel, observe, change, and get deeper in my practice. Making art is a privilege that I have and I want to maintain it and be able to communicate through it. One of the main goals of my work is to connect with others on a deeper nonverbal level.