Bashkirian link
Wherever political prison is, it is a dark place of attack on differences; fear is a place of attack on thoughts; pain is a place of attack on pride. Wherever political prison is, it is a death sign of attack on beings; it is a place of wandering imagination – nightmares.
Wherever a political prison is, it collects texts; it also calls upon the patterns of the art world; it collects the imagination of the art world from the ceiling, the bars, the whip, the prisoner, and the jailer.
The presence of prison in art can be found in a thousand places around the world; it can be found in a thousand historical periods. From the beginning of the birth of suffering and imagination to the present day, when the song of the desire for freedom still scratches the throats and begs the ears; from a land in a distant time; to a place in yesterday, right here nearby. From fantasies to fantasies; from the pressure of pens on paper and the tapping of fingers on buttons to the pattern of colors and scratches on prison walls; in paintings, curtains, scenes, rhythms, songs, poems.
Political prison during the Islamic Republic of Iran is a symbol of symbols; it is the death place of savagery; it is the crystallization of all wounds, farewells, exiles, courage, fears, choices, pride, and it is also the creator of dreams and nightmares.
Political prisons during the Islamic Republic of Iran have created a role, a sound, a scene, and curtains from the presence of whispers – epic, tragic, mystical narratives, from the presence of black-clad people, nudity, questions, and whys. Political prisons during the Islamic Republic of Iran are also a vehicle – a pretext for voices; they are the seedbed of the arts.
The political prison that existed during the Islamic Republic of Iran is so much present in various types of art: arts that were born in different eras; based on their place of birth, languages, approaches, and structures; they have manifested themselves in different forms.
Let’s go.
Today, twenty-seven years after the dry, ruined, dark rain of death in the prisons of the Islamic Republic of Iran, our distinguished guests, in your presence, will speak about the rejection of the political prison of the 1980s in art; through songs, paintings, plays, films, music; through mirrors.
Today, in memory of the ever-burning scars of that year and years to come, we look to the healing mirror of art.