Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson in Victoria Park
Artist: Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson (She/Her)
Work: (our home) خونۀ ما
(2022 - 2023)
Location: Victoria Park, Western Australia
Community partner: Victoria Park Community Centre
About the artist:
Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson (b. Boorloo, Perth, 1996) is an award-winning Iranian Australian Bahá'í video artist, researcher, and has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her research navigates the sharing of stories, understanding its essential role in healing and mental wellbeing in response to traumatic contexts. Working in multi-channel video art installations, she intersects theatrical and cinematic performance with film-poetry, archives and sound, seeking to document, as a witness, cultural stories that transcend beyond a locality into the human condition. Navigating the aesthetic and artistic devices of storytelling and world-building via the moving image, this informs her own perception on how we can facilitate emotional wellbeing in individuals and communities. Uplifting shared voices can transform how we think, feel, perceive, and interpret some of the harshest conditions humans face in conflict, revolution, war and now pandemic. Currently, her practice is intending to navigate how feminine approaches within art-making can be harnessed to mediate conflict. Through emotional immersion in new digital media, she addresses the act of preservation; preserving collective memory over a silent genocide, uncovering home in the face of placelessness, empowering communal love in the face of apathy, and understanding connection whilst we welcome the discomfort of disconnection.
Elham Eshraghian–Haakansson, Asha Kiani with the Second Generation Collective, Áshená, Bear Witness to Me, 2021, multi- channel installation, 4K video with sound, 25:00. Acknowledgements to Lotterywest’s Community Arts Network Dream Plan Do ’20, City of Fremantle, Propel Youth Arts WA, University of Western Australia School of Design, Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship, Amped Digital, Englisifarsi and Centre for Stories.
Learn about Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson’s process:
Gesturing Together is the first SPACED Creative Lab, supported by the City of Canning. Gesturing Together is open to early-to-mid career creatives to participate in a weekend of practice-based exchange.
Working closely with the Victoria Park Community Centre, Know Thy Neighbour #3 video artist Elham Eshragian-Haakansson articulates through moving image, text, and installation, the deep complexities embedded within the experience of home/less/ness felt by the community of Victoria Park.
As an after-hours continuation of the Know Thy Neighbour #3 exhibition, Ashkaan Hadi, will play Santoor durationally in conversation with the archives of his sisters work during her residency with Victoria Community Centre. This is an intimate conversation between the two, as Elham’s reflections with St.Mary’s Outreach Service, she questioned the idea of home being a place or a feeling. The live performance is an active initiation of this.
On Wednesday 22 March and Thursday 23 March we have two public program events to add depth and context to the currently installed Know Thy Neighbour #3 exhibition at Cullity Gallery.
The Know Thy Neighbour #3 exhibition catalogue is intended to be read as a companion piece to the works on show at Cullity Gallery until 25 March 2023.
Photos from the Know Thy Neighbour #3 exhibition opening on Friday 24 February at the Cullity Gallery, UWA School of Design.
Know Thy Neighbour #3 exhibition opens on Friday 24 February at the Cullity Gallery, UWA School of Design.
Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson has recently taken up a space in Bay One of Cullity Gallery, UWA School of Design as an Artist in Residence which has been excellent in terms of informing how elements from her community engagement with Victoria Park during Know Thy Neighbour #3 will come together for the final exhibition.
Join Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson for a conversation in which she will discuss her approach to community-engaged practice, and the work that she developed for her participation in Know Thy Neighbour #3, which recently won her the Ellen José Art Award for Young Women.
We’re looking forward to hearing Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson, who is an artist within our current Know Thy Neighbour #3 program, speak as one of the panellists at the Working with Communities: Artist Talk hosted by Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery.
We are thrilled to see Know Thy Neighbour #3 artist Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson announced as a joint winner in the Ellen José Art Award for Young Women.
Join fellow residents of Victoria Park and surrounds for a gentle, creative workshop on the themes of home, place and identity led by artist Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson and creative arts therapist Cara Phillips. This workshop forms part of Eshraghian-Haakansson’s residency in the Know Thy Neighbour #3 program.
As part of UWA’s Empowering Communities Through Design masters unit coordinated by Lara Camilla Pinho, speakers from Know Thy Neighbour #3 will be discussing their work and reflecting on community engagement. ⠀⠀
Panellists will include Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson and Amy Perejuan-Capone, with Mayma Awaida (Curator, Know Thy Neighbour #3) and Soula Veyradier (Director Programs, Spaced) as moderators.
Through Spaced’s Know Thy Neighbour #3 program, Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson is currently working with the Victoria Park Community Centre, in consultation with creative arts therapist Cara Phillips and the St. Mary’s Outreach Service.
Here, Elham shares her reflective script as a work-in-progress for the first iterative film-poem developed in Victoria Park.
We’re pleased to share details of the first activity to take place as part of our Know Thy Neighbour #3 program: (our home) خونۀ ما is a video art/live performance between artists Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson and Asha Kiani, developed during Eshraghian-Haakansson’s ongoing residency at the Victoria Park Community Centre. This work was built around the consultation and collaboration with creative arts therapist Cara Phillips and the St. Mary’s Outreach Service.
Over the next weeks, we’ll be introducing our Know Thy Neighbour #3 artists, along with their community partners.
Here, we introduce Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson who will be working at the Victoria Park Community Centre.