KAZEMY Diana
Diana Kazemy’s works invite the viewers throughout the video medium to look at the process behind each of her creative acts, and she explains that desires are always the origin of attempts and acts of creation. In relation to space and the physical world, desires are what infests the living with urges, instincts, and frustrations. Kazemy solicits the viewer's minds to reflect on where the source of our desires may be. Exploring her field of possibilities, her creative process conveys that her desires are the invisible link between her unphysical and her physical world. With « The womb, the eye, the end the end is a medium » Kazemy depicts desire as the location and destination and its friction points while she immerses us, with radical simplicity, into a parallel and unphysical world. In this, the fertile woman is a constant and recurring figure throughout Kazemy’s works and fascinations. Her body of work is born from the desire to preserve and capture her thoughts. Her practice is an unfolding of trapped words, thoughts kept in the in-between spaces, forgotten or paused in the unconscious spaces of our mind. She accesses her deepest ones through hypnosis and lucid dreams, interrogating the relationship between the unconscious and reality. The translations of her dreams under hypnosis or in her sleep are the substances that shape her artistic medicines. In her latest work, she reflects on the concept of Querencia through this: what is that space for her? Diana chooses narration and illustration to guide us into her dreams; her voice will be your guide.
▶ TV Liberté 32 ↝ ↝
About Diana
As a transdisciplinary artist, my goal is to create a collective healing to liberate a greatest potential located within and sometimes stuck, in times of despair. By developing a practice where intimacy echoes with metaphysical reflections, my work attempt to prove that we can be our own masters by using hope as a subversive tool for transformation. I aim to create a new perspective and a new consciousness which are the keys to the collective healing.
Body of work
2 spaces 1 main space: into the virtual display “the womb, the eye, the end- the end is a medium” 3 artworks in one space “The Womb” – The womb in labor: words surrounding the creation- manifestations of the research required to get to the final project. “The eye” – The eye in projection: words surrounding the lens- manifestations of the thinking biases that led to the principal vision. “The end” – the video “Derrière la vitre” (“Behind the glass”) 1 gallery: a space for the expression of the urge – reflections “diagram of the womb, the eye, the end” diagram, ink on paper “Mon désir est une femme» screenshots of a poem from the notes of my phone “TV LIBERTÉ 32” vocal note to myself from my phone “Drawings post hypnosis” are drawings made out of a hypnosis session as referred in the video
Interview
Could you introduce yourself?
Hello, my name is Diana Kazemy, I’m a 26 transdisciplinary artist based in Paris. I am French-iranian-algerian. I am a poet, video-artist, writer, musician, actress, voice artist, composer, sound artist, dancer and model.
How would you describe your practice?
My practice can be divided into two aspect. One that I will call the melodic aspect: which will prioritize what is to be said, such as the narration. A second that I call the frequency aspect: which is more immersive and meditative. One will impact the cognitive and mental abilities and the other will impact a more sensorial dimension. The second one may be less perceptible but is powerful on the mind. I use sometimes one, sometimes both as a recipe to create an artistic medicine.
The beginning of a project comes from the emergence of a multiplicity of ideas and the desire to keep them, to capture them. I try to write down the ideas that come through my mind with anything that comes to hand: my notebooks, my phone, my notes, my recorder, my camera. I want to highlight in my practice the plurality of mediums to express an idea.
Why did you choose to present this work in this exhibition?
I chose to present this work because I wanted it to be a deep reflection on the concept of Querencia – origin & desire – space of desire. First, by asking: what is real and what is not real? For the Main-Space work that I created especially for this exhibition, I thought of working on a video. I thought it was an interesting medium to think about the relationship that exist between our dreams, our perception and the so-called “objective” reality. What I try to show is that we shape our own reality. Our dreams and unconscious world keep on living during the daytime, it actually shapes how we interact with the world.
Also, I wanted to show the process of creation by developing a 3 works in one. An artistic project first starts to live in the non-existing, non-apparent world. I want to demonstrate that desire is the invisible link between what was not until what was: as a womb shaping the bones and the live of a new being, but also as the eye reinterpreting what it sees through the prism of its own beliefs. Desire as the transformation into the material world… that is also virtual. I was really interested on creating a “virtual” piece of art to highlight that while alive, we also evolve in a non-material space that exists in the same timeline yet in another dimension than the material space.
In the video, the medium and structure of the narration: dream/outside world/hypnoses interrogates the relationship between unconsciousness and reality. Amongst it, I try to show the different definitions of desire: the desire as an urge from and to the unknown symbolized by the spiritual quest and the trinity of the self, the desire as an accidental and trivial feeling of love that changes your motivation in life, the desire as a frustration for what is not yet but should be. I then try to show that the source of our desire is actually within ourselves. Desire as a movement to discover our spiritual selves as what we desire are actually mirrors of our soul.
In the Gallery-Space I wanted to create a reflection to the various forms of desire and how new mediums as smartphones can manage to manifest and archive the feeling of urge and frustration of desire. I decided to show a poem screenshotted from the notes of my phone and a vocal note to myself randomly made while going back home one night. Both reflecting on desire. The poem was written at a party, where I felt an intense desire to resolve an interrogation. I wrote it and screenshot it and shared it for 24 hours in an Instagram story. The vocal note was a conversation to myself where I expressed an urge to realign my obsessive thinking with action of artistic creation. When I listened to it while preparing this exhibition, I felt compassion for this homeless reflection, thus I decided to give it a space and by doing so, to tell myself-back-then: “you see? It found a home”.
Does such a space exist for you?
For me its life, it’s a work in progress. It is infinite and it can only exist in a metaphysical experience. This is what I tried to demonstrate by showing for example how 1 work can become 3 works depending on your point of view.
Could you describe what it is?
This space is a medium, a movement, a work in progress, a guidance toward questioning reality as it is to propose a new perspective. Doing so we get to know who we are, creators. Thus, this place is creation of sense, creation of a new ways to understand the truth. There is a space in time from the emergence of the question and the resolution, inside this space is desire. Desire kisses you with the “?” then penetrates your womb and keeps you warm while creating answers, then it gets out of your body when its ready to protect its life without you. It’s everywhere, everything that you love, that you loved, everything that you create. It’s you yesterday and tomorrow. It’s your present. While you move your chest without even thinking, something in you is loving you to make you breathe.