Published on July 13, 2021

Nazanin Noroozi

Untitled #15. 2018. Cyanotype and collage on paper. 35 x 50 inches, image courtesy of the artist, image courtesy of the artist

https://www.nazaninnoroozi.net

I always felt like “the other” back home since the way I thought of politics and culture differed from the norm. Therefore, my experience of loss and belonging starts before my physical move to the U.S. To be honest, in some ways I feel much more at home here in the U.S than my homeland, although I don’t feel I belong either. For me home the conventional sense does not exist anymore. I am in constant “in between-ness,” which is a situation that I welcome and explore conceptually and technically in my works. My experimental handmade films address longing, loss, and the fragile states of being and ideas of “home” that never materialize.

In an odd and unpleasant way, the anxieties that people around the world are feeling as a cause of the pandemic feel like a familiar place. As an Iranian artist who’s had to deal with extreme social and political upheavals for years, the sudden disappearance of “normalcy” (or what appeared to be normal) was not a new feeling.

I am interested in the archeology of technology and personal archives, expressed through using alternative photographic processes, printmaking, and handmade cinema. This series navigates between still and moving images, the tactile quality of art objects, and transient moments of films to explore fragile states of being and ideas of home that never materialize.

Anna Mikaela Ekstrand, The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Nazanin Noroozi, ART SPIEL,

Reflections on the work of contemporary artists, December 2020.

https://artspiel.org/the-immigrant-artist-biennial-nazanin-noroozi/