Lost Future Reimagined
In this project, Aishe Vejdani will engage her work with future that is in dialogue with political, social and cultural context of her present and past. In her recent body of work for the past few years, she has investigated her ancestors’ history and memory during the Sovietisation of Central Asia in Turkmenistan between 1920-1930. Brutality of Soviet Union leaves her ancestors who survived with no choice than leaving to and relocation in Iran, where Vejdani was born and raised.
Within this current work, Vejdani will investigate her ancestor’s relocation in Iran and its effect in shaping the perception of future within her family. What different context does to ones’s perception of future, and how a lost future in ones’ own land gets picked up in a foreign land? Furthermore in this project Vejdani’s Turkmen ethnicity within the tension of minority versus majority in Iran’s contemporary history and hence its effect in imagining future will be tackled.
From Memory to Memorial
‘From Memory to Memorial’ takes its reference from artists’ familial past around some historical events between 1920-1930 in Turkmenistan. While this decade was crucial for Turkmenistan to acquire a clearly defined territory under the Soviet rule, it came at huge cost to her ancestors: execution, confiscation of property, and displacement.
In 2017 she started exploring her familial history of that specific time period through her art practice and exhibited the final work in 2019 at B-galleria Turku, Finland. This current show is the continuation of the Turku show, however with a different angle. In Vejdani’s earlier show the focus was on studying the transmission of her familial history of that time through familial memory, while this time the focus is on portraying that memory and juxtaposing it with some elements. Elements such as Turkmen rituals, Turkmen epic stories, Turkmen carpet making, Turkmen written history, and western art history. This depicts her curiosity to construct a connection with all those elements. A connection that is either temporal ( before and after), spatial or relational. Through this built connection, she attempts to make her familial past visible and map it in a broader contemporary historical events.
To Err Is Human
In 2020, Aishe Vejdani was selected to take part in Mänttä art festival, the biggest summer festival for contemporary art in Finland. This year's festival curator was Anna Ruth, and it was held at summer 2021.
Fog Festival Screening
Fog, a short film written and directed by Aishe Vejdani got selected to be screened at Kotka international film festival in Finland 2021. Festival’s selection was focused on films with high artistic quality.
Because They Were Three, They Were Four
This collective short film 'Because They Were Three, They Were Four’ is co-written and co-directed with Aishe Vejdani (b. 1986, Gonbad Kavus, Iran) Shahi Derky (b. 1997, Damascus, Syria),) and Uzair Amjad’s(b.1989, Lahore, Pakistan). It was commissioned by curator Elham Rahmati to explore plurality of truth through storytelling in films. This film was among other artworks curated by Elham Rahmati exhibited at Stoa gallery, Helsinki.
Fog Festival Screening
Fog, a short film written and directed by Aishe Vejdani got premiered in Helsinki international film festival 'Love & Anarchy' 2020 in the curated section callled 'With the Current...' curated by Sepideh Raha.
From laughter to Cry
From 2017-2019 Aishe Vejdani engaged her practice with her familial history of 1920-1930 in Turkmenistan, where her family originally comes from. She exhibited the final work at B-galleria Turku. In this project, she investigates transmission of her familial history of that time through memory. She tackles some issues and questions such as her alienation from her familial history and where it comes from. She uses laughter as a tool to help her get closer to and own her traumatic familial history.
From East to West: My Diary
One year after immigration to Finland, time and place specificity comes back to Aishe Vejdani's work. As any newcomer she was introduced to Finland's epic literature Kalevala. Creation of this book in its urge to preserve Finnish language and its oral literature reminded her of Iran’s epic book ‘Shahnameh’. Though there are differences between the two in their scope, time and place, nevertheless the cause is more or less the same: to protect the language and oral literature from the danger of scatter and oblivion under different government rules.
Vejdani could relate to the urge to preserve the language and oral literature. She shares this urge as an ethnic minority in Iran to preserve her Turkmen language and oral literature. Therfore Vejdani was curious in portraying this urge and exposing it to her life visually. She used some illustrations of Klevalah and Shahname stories and juxtaposed them with her family photos. This juxtapose was done by collage on her paintings.
The One and Only
This painting series was painted right after Aishe Vejdani immigrated to Finland, and exhibited as a solo painting show at Loimaa art museum's Dryer gallery. This project engages itself with questions of identity and female subjectivity at the verge immigration. Subjects in this series are portrayed in a space with no specific time or place, much like inner world.