Portfolio

samieh shahcheraghi

Broken pen as my tongue (Penomenology)

I experience everything with my body, perception, sensation and my unconscious. Drawing for me has the potential to investigate the experience of the things or things as they appear in my experience(phenomenology). I used to make drawing of an object to investigate this matter. After experiencing mental attack,  my drawing was affected by the new challenges and my pain. I discharged from the hospital with lot of drawing and drawing-based media such as music and poetry. My body, my unconscious mind, my tongue and Samieh was survived by a pen. I use drawing visual elements such as scratches or crumpled paper as a mediator to other media such as music, poetry and film to make drawing-based media. For example, my camera as my pen, my pen as my tongue , the sound of drawing as a musical research and my pen sound as the musical notation for my cello.

 “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” 

Rumi

Sketch book
Mixed media
50*30
2021

I think that with the opening of the paper space, my audience is given the opportunity to get out of the two-dimensional space and pass through the paper and go beyond the paper. the paper may be a confined space for my drawing, and my drawings want to perforate the papers and get rid of them. It is like Like experiencing the pain. This release allows the audience to think more about the line's impact or space. I think my lines are like fish that tend to go deep into the sea of ​​paper and swim. I think that, by flipping through the paper, light passes through the gaps in my sketchbook. To me, this is like the reflection of light into the depths of the sea on a fish. Perhaps the fish were once paper prisoners themselves , but now, by splitting the paper, they were able to free themselves and gain access to light.

Mixed media on paper
130*100
2021

I think about seeing a cup from a different point of view. I think my perception of the cup can be changed when I see the cup from a different perspective. I try to use the camera as the contemporary phenomenological tool to examine this matter by using it as a pen, follow my way of seeing through the cup, then record the pen movements when I am drawing the cup and put them together to show the eye movement by camera and pen.  

I think my tongue is unable to talk when I think the pain. I decided to use my pen as a musical instrument to talk when I was in the hospital. I thought that each of the lines produces sound. I decided to recognize the musical notes and symbols by using a tuner and then play the notes by my cello. For example, I put a tuner to recognize what is the notes of sketching and cutting the paper. Then I write the notes and play them with my cello. then I mix the sound of drawing and cello.

Drawing as a concerto

The practical part of the Drawing as a concerto album that contains ten tracks.

The idea to experience pain with the body as a form of drawing relates to my research question of how the phenomena of pain can be part of a musical instrument. I held a pencil between my toes to discover the experience of automatic drawing by my hands and feet. I put the pencil between my toes and made a sound on the cello strings with a bow. With every sound made by my bow and hands, lines are drawn on the paper by my toes. My feet and hands have a direct connection. In fact, my hands lead my feet and tell me how to draw. If I press the bow on the string, the lines become sharper. My mind guides my hands, and my hands conduct my bow and legs, and then various lines on the paper are drawn by my legs. The sounds also are directly related to the drawing. For example, when I produce sound with vibration, the lines on the paper start to vibrate.

To examine the process about phenomenology of drawing ,I use an ordinary object: a cup. I made a lot of cup inside the wood cubes and shadow the light behind them to play with the perception and unconscious mind. I was used to ignore ordinary objects and every simple thing that happened surrounding me. I just took advantage of them through functional work. A talk at The Swedenborg Society by Harman on Heidegger helped made me attentive of an ordinary object:

“We can either pick the hammer up and use it, or we can contemplate it from a distance. When we pick up the hammer and use it the hammer is ready to be put to work, assuming we know how to wield it. In the second case, what Heidegger calls ‘present-at-hand’, we simply stare at the hammer as an object, trying to make sense of it by some kind of intellectual analysis. In this case Heidegger claims that we never uncover the true being of the hammer as a tool, we are simply confronted with a curious lump of inert physical stuff. When everything is working well, we have no need to think about the hammer, instead we can just enjoy the experience of getting a good job done.”

St Augustine: ”We consider light as the lack of darkness while everything that is dark is light. Not clarifying places and times in darkness is important and valuable as much as the day.”
According to James Elkins there is a gap between seeing and drawing, which he considers a form of blindness. I want to take advantage of this idea and use it to show how I ignore the environment and searching for the environmental phenomenology of drawing and blindness. Darkness can be form of the blindness. What is the silence and words? What is the silence and sounds? Does the darkness exist? Does the lightness exist? Is a white paper empty of darkness? Is the black paper empty of darkness? An empty paper can be a sort of blindness. When I expose the light behind the paper and cup, the reality can be seen through the empty paper and when I move the light, I can see my drawing on the paper. So sometimes I see the drawing and sometimes I see the empty paper. consequently, I found that the paper can illustrate my blindness. That’s why I believe that lightness and darkness have special meaning.

Etching on paper
100*70
2021

Residency former Backer en Rueb factory, Breda,April-May 2021 together with networked collective

Sketch book
40*40
Mix media
2021

What happens when I make a drawing of an object over and over? What is the repetitive process in drawing and what is the relation between repetition and phenomenology? Repetition is the way to explore about environmental phenomenology and unconscious mind. I try to make a lot of drawings of an object like a comb as an ordinary object to examine the process of repletion. To me, repetition means the transition from a world of rules to a world without rules. Of course, my knowledge and experience are involved in this transition. For example at first I tried to draw a comb with real shape. After a while I saw the comb changed into a dot, line and abstract shapes. My experience in this regard is that at the first stage, my mind proceeds with the rules (conscious mind) and tends to depict my mind from the comb according to the rules. After a while, like a child walking slowly, my mind goes ahead of the rules of the drawing.

Installation

Network collective
Dürst Britt & Mayhew,2021
The Hague

Improvised music and installation

Network collective
Dürst Britt & Mayhew
2021
The Hague

installation

Network collective
Dürst Britt & Mayhew
2021
The Hague

Bas van den Hurk & Jochem van Laarhove Residency at Van Gogh AiR, Klein-Zundert, November 2021 - January 2022 together with Reinout Scholten van Aschat

collaborated with:
Lotte Driessen, Bram Suijker, Mattias van de Vijver, Joost de Haas,
Sofie HollanderAviana,Samieh Shahcheraghi Loran van de Wier,
Matthijs van de Sande Bakhuyzen, Rob van Kranenburg

presentation
Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens
2022 


collaborated with:
Lotte Driessen, Bram Suijker, Mattias van de Vijver, Joost de Haas,
Sofie Hollander, Samieh Shahcheraghi, Aviana, Loran van de Wier,
Matthijs van de Sande Bakhuyzen, Rob van Kranenburg

Acrylic and pastel on canvas
100*75
2019

I made the video based on my drawing to use drawing material as a tool for making other media.

etching on plate

sketchbook,
oil pastel and acrylic,
28*40
2019

sketchbook,
oil pastel and acrylic,
28*40
2018-2019

I used to create new lines before. It was based on the question: How many lines can be created with limited material? When mentioning drawing lines, I mean “the line” itself, not the form of it. I was eager to know how many lines can be drawn on a simple paper with a calligraphy pen and some ink, without any additional materials. It was the first step in my journey. Limited material means that I did not add any new materials, but it was fine to reduce! I wanted to practice the creativity by decreasing my choices in materials and tools or changing the usage of them, for example, by scraping paper and draw a new line or I could draw with the saddle of my pen or the width of it. Was it possible not to use the ink and draw with a pen? There were lots of ways. Subsequently, I considered that I can use extra materials on my paper, for example, a combination of ink and oil to paint on the paper. If I continued this line creation procedure, new lines would be made. It was the project from before and now it seems it is in my subconscious mind. When I put the pencil on the paper and I want to draw from my subconscious automatically, all those lines come out of my subconscious. It's my subconscious language that comes with the pencil movement.

Line project
2017

Email: samieh.shahcheraghi@gmail.com

Phone number: +311687917256

Address: Joost van geelstraat,54B,3021VN,Rotterdam

www.samiehshahcheraghi.com