Spectral Days by Setareh Shahbazi

Please join us for the launch of Spectral Days, an artist book by Setareh Shahbazi, with a text by Mirene Arsanios.



"I am glad that things have changed. All efforts toward ridding oneself of the historical past and acquiring new family members have been rewarded. This new sequencing of verb tenses was the material expression of her private epiphanies. Now, photographs were just photographs: pieces of paper that could be pleated, replaced and slipped into a pocket."



Setareh Shahbazi was born in Tehran in 1978. She moved to Germany in 1985, leaving behind a swimming pool, a garden and all family photographs. After studying Scenography and Media Art at the State University for Art and Design in Karlsruhe, she traveled to Beirut in 2003 with a scholarship from the DAAD to look through other peoples photographic archives at the Arab Image Foundation.



In 2009 Setareh Shahbazi moved to Beirut with a box of photographs from Tehran. There she got into a close conversation with her neighbor Mirene Arsanios, who is a writer based in Beirut.