My presentation proposes an exploration of the toilet as an artistic and political space—an overlooked site where solitude, shame, embodiment,... Read More
My presentation proposes an exploration of the toilet as an
artistic and political space—an overlooked site where solitude, shame,
embodiment, and resistance intersect. Drawing from my four-year
research-creation project, I will share a series of self-portraits taken in
toilets around the world, including public, institutional, and domestic
settings.
This work is grounded in feminist theory, performance
studies, and embodied research, and relates directly to IMPACT25’s concern with
spaces of care, vulnerability, and radical imagination. Toilets, often
relegated to the margins of architecture and discourse, are reclaimed here as
heterotopias (Foucault) and intimate stages—where bodies are not only exposed
but renegotiated.
Through photography, autobiographical writing, and
performance, I question how we inhabit "non-places" and how those
spaces can be transformed into sites of agency. My talk will include images,
narration, and a reflection on the ethics of visibility, shame, and
positionality, especially from my experience as an Iranian artist negotiating
cultural and political constraints.
IMPACT25 offers a space to challenge normative
aesthetics and bring private truths into public discourse. I want to engage
with others in rethinking how the ordinary—such as the act of sitting on a
toilet—can hold revolutionary potential.
