Parissa Guill
2024
London Metropolitan University, London, UK
Collaborators: Kasra Guill, Hossein Karami
A few weeks ago, on my way back home, I was walking through the garden near my flat that I pass by every day and found a bunch of pigeon feathers on the ground. There was no reluctant pigeon walking around aimlessly. It must have been left behind by its flock or maybe just landed for a while to see if it could find anything in the grass. Well, it could have even been caught somewhere else and then was carried here. No fox galloping or neighbour’s cat squatting behind the bush. But it must have been a good hunter —yeah, probably a fox. But now there is nothing. Just feathers on the grass, just a trace left “there”.
“THERE?” is a photographic exploration employing both staged and documentary techniques alongside small sized installations and a collage piece combined with written word. This project is presented as a photo reportage and consists of three chapters, “with”, “without” and “traces”. Each delineating a different level of human presence. The photographs were taken on distinct areas of the artist’s living environment: her neighbourhood, her workplace and university, and various public spaces within the city. The idea of this project started during another project of hers called ‘The monument to the cryer’, a contemporary monument focusing on voids and reclaiming the public realm by performing a very basic human act: crying.
