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Taklif: تکلیف is made of home-works: invitations for narratives, recollection of shared memories, and practicing in drafts. Taklif: Ideas of Femininity is an ongoing home-work that started in 2017, with an open conversation among eight Iranian women on the junction of cultural distances, temporal paths, and spatial destinations. Crossing such borders, in order to share a collective practice, was not solely possible by narrating ideas; while there is always a delay in ideas, personal memories dwell in an immediate space of togetherness. Instead of following the imposed guidelines of certain ideologies, the study has been mostly based on private libraries of embodied knowledge.
Taklif: Ideas of Femininity exhibition at FOFA Gallery, Montreal (November 5 – December 14, 2018), was the first attempt to recollect memories of the religious ceremony Jashn-e-Taklif: جشن تکلیف (ceremony of being dutiful). This religious rite of passage claims to mark the transition from childhood to adulthood and is held at Iranian pedagogical institutions and/or with families in the third grade of elementary school. Drawing from a collection of oral histories, handwritings, and home videos, the material for the exhibition was gathered through mutual (re)collection. The gallery exhibition was accompanied by a symposium at Concordia University (November 9, 2018).
Cargo Collective 2017 — Frogtown, Los Angeles
