Everybody Was Waiting
Collaborative window installation between Sholeh Asgary, Shaghayegh Cyrous and Sahar Delijani
Artists Television Access, San Francisco, 2019 Part of In Honor of... Project
Everybody was Waiting is an audio visual installation that activates the windows of ATA into listening devices of waiting and remembrance. Viewers are invited to explore the space by pressing their ears to the glass.
A collection of songs and poems, these voices belong to now adult children whose parents were political prisoners in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution in Iran. Some of these children were born in prison. Some have lost a parent to the mass executions of 1988. Some of them continue living in Iran. Some are in exile.
Through song and space, this installation looks into the notion of waiting for both those inside and outside of prison. Exploring the intimacy of sound and the absence of presence, the windows are amplified with the voices of these children, which can be felt as well as heard. Weaving in and out, disparate but existing together, they tell a non-literal story of a still silenced experience.
