Mom Washed the Mountains
Art Show
By Rozhgar Mahmood
Video performance
Place, Dayik Park, Sulaimanyah
Camera, Chia Jamal
Curator: Avan Omar
The idea behind this performance was standing for a poet and
lyrics that are written about motherhood. It is an effort to
depict and display those words through some familiar materials
and gestures. On the other hand, aiming to analyze and point out
its context ironically and with fantasy. This is covering both
concepts, the motherhood and the poet for building warm
perceptions with the audience. At this stage, the modifications
of the words and the main character which is the mother leading
to another platform. Simplistically, criticizing the
circumstances, and the meaning of existence. This is my
experience and I have my method to perform it. It is direct and
converging different times and places. The text was paraphrased
by the famous author Latif Halmat as it was originally inspired
by Persian text.
My Mother
My mom has washed the windows glasses
Even the carpet that located under our feet
She washed all the rooms
All the glasses of the oil lamp are washed by her
She washed all of dirty stuff
All over spaces and all the angles washed by her
She smiles with telling us that the summer came already
I have to clean and wash up everything children
Then with her most soften hands
she cleaned all of our laundry
After washing our clothes, emotionally and kindly, she started
to wash away our sadness, and worries
Rozhgar Mahmood
A contemporary artist based in Sulaimanyah holding several
degrees related to art, visual art and modernization, the
most recent was a master of visual arts at the University of
Chelsea, London. Rozhgar works on various mediums and styles
such as video, performance and texts as much as highlighting
the concepts. The methods with her outcomes are related to
the effects on her everyday life and converting it into an
art project.
The Performance
This project had performed twice during These people are working
project.
Firstly, at the Dayik Park (Mother Park) spontaneously without
any invitation for audience 10/06/2021, only those who were
happened to be there could see the performance live. Later this
performance was promoted through social media.
The second platform was during the Sujin show on 10/07/2021.
Alongside with another four-art works for five days at the Karim
Chawshin Gallery, as well as been displayed via projecter. The
materials that used in this performance is been displayed in the
room with the video as an installation. The stuff was put in the
bucket at the same time was covered by the carpet underneath.
Which means the audience was seeing a bucket that was covered
with its carpet and the projector was lighting it as a
transparent matter through the video. The artist was making
effort to show how difficult is to make a fusion between the
texts and the performance. Although been referenced to Latif
Halmat’s text. It showed that the mother can wash everything.
Reducing the dirtiness and cover the calm. Mother has her method
to boost our resistance system physically and mentally.
Mortality has a unique sacrifice that has no hesitation to give.
At this stage, Rozhgar had an emphasis on the mother character,
the victimization and scapegoating’s. Hence, there was a
continuation of questions on every individual mother. In my
opinion, that was a potent point that an art performance can
do.
For further details and information about this performance
please see the page of Sujin (Needle) Show.
Thanks to those who helping us with this performance especially
to: Chya Jamal, Rebeen Majeed, Narmin Mustafa, and the Dayk
park’s staff.