Amak Mahmoodian
United Kingdom
One Hundred and Twenty Minutes
Through photographs, text, drawings, poetry, and video, One Hundred and Twenty Minutes looks at the emotional and psychological landscapes of dreams in exile, the new lives created within these dreams, and the ways in which they keep returning us to our past.
Research shows that on average, people dream for around two hours every night, even if they don’t remember it. As an artist with lived experience of exile and displacement over the last 15 years, dreams are a way of connecting to a lost home and family, as they move between reality and imagination.
This expanded body of work is an attempt to collaborate with individuals who cannot return to their homeland and live in exile in the UK. It was developed over six years, drawing on conversations between the artist and 16 collaborators from 14 different countries about recurring dreams and the effects of exile on memory. The work suggests that dreaming allows for a return to a past that cannot be reached while awake. It also reveals the ways in which dream logic, though deeply personal, is based on a shared understanding and a universal language.
Amak Mahmoodian is a multidisciplinary artist and educator. She began her career as a research-based photographer in Iran in 2003. Since 2010, she has been living in the UK, unable to return to Iran. Her practice explores the presentation of gender, identity and displacement, bridging a space between personal and political across platforms and formats, including photographs, texts, videos, drawings, installations, and films.
Mahmoodian has exhibited her work internationally at places such as the Carnegie Museum of Art, Fototeca Latinoamericana, the Benaki Museum, Arnolfini, and Rencontres d’Arles. Her projects and publications include Shenasnameh and Zanjir, the latter winning the Best Photo Text Book Award at Rencontres d’Arles. Her work’s held in collections such as the Tate and the British Library.
