Bahar Behbahani Presents A TIDE OF A MEMORY, A Performance at MAPSpace: Miranda Arts Project Space, 9/13

Bahar Behbahani, in collaboration with interactive artist, Negar Behbahani and musician, Maciek Schejbal, has created A Tide of a Memory-a participatory video installation exploring the power of bread through people's personal memories amid larger political and economic spheres of this universal sustenance. This Saturday, September 13, the artists will premiere the project in Port Chester, New York. The collaborative project was created during their residency at MAPSpace: Miranda Arts Project Space. A Tide of a Memory is inspired by the history of the Tide Mill, a prolific grain mill operated in Rye, New York during the 18th century.

Over the 2 hours of the performance, Bahar Behbahani takes the role of masseur, offering participants a 5-minute kneading massage, while they are lying down to view a video. A Tide of a Memory experiments with stimulating people's memory through the process of being massaged while engaging their sense of sight and hearing within an immersive video and sound installation-created by Negar Behbahani, Bahar Behbahani, and Maciek Schejbal. Together with participants they experience the role of sensoria in reproducing forgotten memories. Audience members are welcome to participate or just watch the performance unfold, however participation is limited.

Negar Behbahani and Bahar Behbahani are sisters who have a long-term collaboration history on many videos made around Central Asia and the Middle East. Maciek Schejbal, musician and composer with a wide range of collaborative and cultural experiences from around the world, including Europe, South and West Africa, joined them for the latest project at MAPSpace. You can follow the progress of the artists during their residency on Knead, Bubble, and Rise.

Date + Time
Saturday, September 13
Performance: 3-5pm

Location
MAPSpace
6 North Pearl Street, 4th Floor
Port Chester, NY

Multidisciplinary artist, Bahar Behbahani's work addresses her long-term conceptual dialogue with memory and loss, representing her chronic displacement and longing. Through her lyrical videos Behbahani stages a contemporary cultural critique by layering and juxtaposing allusions to past and present sociopolitical circumstances with a language that she draws from her experience as a painter. Her work has been featured in the 18th Biennale of Sydney, Australia; Sharjah Biennial 10, UAE; Queens Museum, New York; The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan; MACRO, Museum of Contemporary Art, Italy; Mimara Museum, Croatia; The Tribeca Film Festival, New York; as well as the Asia Art Biennial, Bangladesh, among others.

Behbahani was awarded an Art Omi International Artists Residency by The Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant in 2013 and the Art and Culture Network Program Grant from the Open Society Institute, Budapest in 2011. Guggenheim Museum Curator Suzanne Cotter selected her video for the 10th Sharjah Biennial, UAE. In 2007, her video Suspended was selected 'Best in Show' by Carrie Springer, Senior Curatorial Assistant, Whitney Museum of American Art. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Queensland Museum, Australia; Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE; and Columbia Hospital, New York; as well as numerous private collections. She received her BA and MA in painting in Tehran, Iran and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Photo Credit: All You Knead, 2013, Video installation and interactive performance, Casa dell'Arte Hotel, Bodrum, Turkey © Bahar Behbahani 2013