Hover for content warnings: mention of sexual harassment in artist's note
Artist's Note
The Wall video is a representational video questioning sexual harassment and rapes happening in Iran.
I collected data from 580 Iranian Women, and as a result, 85 percent of them have experienced sexual harassment and rape in their life. After that, I interviewed 50 women between the ages of 24 and 35 and asked them how many times they have encountered harassment in their life. Many of them weren’t able to remember how many times they encountered sexual harassment and just answered with “too many to recall.”
In the video, I am fragmenting and breaking a brick with a hammer and representing the pain I had encountered while I was experienced sexual harassments in my life. That brick was a metaphor for myself as I was breaking in those moments of violations.
Sepideh Badakhshanian was born in January 1992 in Tehran, Iran.
She received Bachelor of Architecture degree in Tehran 2010 and is currently studying Master of Fine Arts at Kansas State University since 2019.
She is a multimedia artist concentrating on cyanotype prints and sculptures. She started photography when she was 11 while studying astronomy at Zaferanieh Educational Observatory. Her works portrays the dilemma of women in Iran and the United States of America.
As an Iranian woman living in a conservative country, the restrictions and afflictions affecting women in her hometown have always been challenging for her, the experience of dealing with these predicaments are somehow reflected in her photo sets, self-portraits, and sculptures collection.
Together with these socio-political concerns living in such a place brings about; a mild and constant pain that has always been living inside her has consciously had its specific ramifications on her artworks as well.
