Through the Letters

As an Iranian, upon entering China, with a little contemplation on the rich culture of the country, you can find a lot of similarities between the cultural basis of the two countries. Apart from all these cultural similarities, what attracts a lot of attention in the middle of daily conversations and encounters is the common limitations of the two countries. Internet filtering, censorship, and other limitations in expressing one’s thoughts are very upsetting.

This project was a collaboration between my spouse, Negin Mahzoun, and me during the Organhaus artist residency program in Chongqing, China, in 2013. We asked some of the local artists to freely express the prohibited thoughts in short sentences. Then we borrowed their clothes and painted their sentences in the Persian language on their clothes. The clothes presented in the exhibition were the outcome of Chongqing artists’ free thoughts in the Persian language, which was returned to them at the end of the exhibition.

Through the Letters, China, 2013 © Tooraj Khamenehzadeh