Mashid Mohadjerin - Spiraling Outward
28.02.2025
08.06.2025
In the exhibition Spiraling Outward, Iranian-Belgian artist Mashid Mohadjerin (b. 1976, Tehran) invites you to experience her universe where she weaves photography, video installations, collages and text into a personal and delicate fabric that blurs the conventional boundaries between art and documentary, time and space, the factual and the emotive.
Family chronicles merge with momentous political events and are set against the background of a broader history of the MENA-region. Mohadjerin uncovers invisible nuances hidden beneath the extraordinary and the familiar. The exhibition Spiraling Outward offers an alternative, multifaceted view on pressing issues such as migration, cultural transformation and resistance.
This is the first time her new series, based on her book Riding in Silence & The Crying Dervish (2025) is on view. The selection connects an account of forced migration to a wider research on how notions of masculinity relate to political ideology in a rapidly changing world.
Riding in Silence is a continuation of her acclaimed series Freedom is Not Free (2021), in which she explores the role of women in the context of resistance in the MENA-region. Through photography, collages, personal archives and family stories she highlights several generations of women who fight for their freedom.
Mohadjerin’s video installations Rapture (2020/2023) en My Body, Every Body (2022/2023), explores the role of traditions and rituals in the context of resistance. A soundscape by Radwan Mouhned ties together the two installations.
Thumbs Up (2019) is a compilation of Instagram footage by Maedeh Hojabri, who was arrested in 2018 for dancing and showing her body in “public” and thereby defying the continuing restrictions on women in Iran. The work sheds light on the ongoing resistance of a new generation.
The recent installation Border Crossing (2024), a collaboration with composer Jan De Vroede, reflects on spatial boundaries and migration through image and sound.
About Mashid Mohadjerin
Multidisciplinary artist Mashid Mohadjerin (b. 1976, Tehran, Iran) obtained her Doctorate in the Arts at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp in 2021.
Her work is shown internationally and has received multiple awards, including the Les Rencontres d’Arles Author’s Book Award for Freedom is Not Free (2021) and first prize in the Contemporary Issues category of World Press Photo 2009. She has published three books and during this exhibition will present her most recent artist’s book, Riding in Silence & The Crying Dervish (2025).
In recent years Mohadjerin’s research-based work has expanded towards multi-media installations containing video work, sound, text, collages and performance. Through these media she continues to explore multi-perspectivity and alternative forms of narration.
Mohadjerin’s newest artist’s book, Riding in Silence & The Crying Dervish (2025), is for sale at the FOMU shop.
