ZAHRA SALEKI PHOTOGRAPHY
This Storm is You.
"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine. And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.",( Kafka on Shore by Haruki Murakami)
When one immigrates from one place to another, they died and reborn again. They are born while they are dying. Through this journey, the immigrant relives many things with a new surface, with the constant adjustment and survival of this death and rebirth game. " This Storm is you" is a represtation of this journey through dance, light, and photography. Immigrants bodies and their soul will transform from being solid, and real to be liquid and abstract. Their volume is still the same, but their shape keeps changing. Immigration is a symphony of this death and rebirth ceremony, with the creation of a new abstract song on each state.
This Storm is you, first presented at the Nuit Blanche festival in Toronto as a photo-installation in 2018. This project presented through photography, lightboxes, projector mapping that had interaction with the audience, and lightboxes for the audience to write their stories on them.
This is 200 photo series.
