Between the prey and your shadow
June 12 - June 26, 2026
ARTISTS
CATALOGUE
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Sheydaei Gallery
June 12 - June 26, 2026
Address: Unit1, No.149, Bahar-E-Shiraz Sq., Bahar-E-Shiraz St.,Haft-E-Tir Sq., Tehran, Iran
Tel: +98 21 88815539
+98 902 4812938
Fridays and Openings: 4 – 8 p.m.
Sun – Thu : 3 – 7:30 p.m.
The gallery is closed on Saturdays.
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I entered a house where time had stood still. It was as though I had travelled back fifty years. Time had come to a halt in every corner of the house. The objects, the old furniture, the clothes inside the wardrobes, the books, the gramophone records, the children’s toys, and the family photo albums, all covered in dust, had remained untouched. It was as if the inhabitants had been forced to leave their home suddenly, without even having the chance to gather their belongings. It was an involuntary and unwanted departure, a difficult exile.
The child who had left that house must surely have been attached to their dolls. The woman who had left it must have wished to take her white wedding dress out of the wardrobe and carry it with her. But alas, time does not allow us to grow attached to things. Sometimes, we are forced to let go, even of our family photo albums. Albums filled with photographs of people who will never be seen again.
As time passes, these photographs, rather than preserving the sweetness of life’s moments, come to carry a profound sense of longing and sorrow, reminding us of absence and loss. My encounter with this enchanting house happened by chance, at the same time that I was photographing the fish market in Rasht as part of a documentary photography project.
The fish, lying still on metal trays, their bodies covered in scratches and their eyes wide open, their mouths agape, reminded me of these photographs. These fish were no longer symbols of life, movement, and reproduction. With their vacant eyes and lifeless expressions, they transported the viewer’s mind towards thoughts of death and nothingness.
This series took shape in my mind during the solitude of the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine, somewhere between the caught fish and the shadows of people who are no longer here. Today, Between the Caught Fish and the Shadows tells a story of life, death, nostalgia, and displacement.
Artworks
