Elham Rahmati (b. 1989, Tehran) is a visual artist, independent curator and editor based in Helsinki. Her work is informed by the disruptive sparks emerging from the intersectional art and culture environs that counter the status quo, aspiring to develop them as springboards for new ways of thinking and working towards hope, liberation, and building internationalist, feminist, and anti-imperialist solidarities. Rahmati has a background in Fine Arts and works with mediums such as painting, drawing and video-installations.
Rahmati is also the co-founder and co-editor of NO NIIN, an independent online monthly magazine at the cusp of art, criticality, and love. In 2019 and 2020, she worked as the curator and producer of the Academy of Moving People & Images (AMPI), an independent film school in Helsinki.
Elham holds an MA in Visual Arts from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze and an MA in Visual Culture, Curating, & Contemporary Art from Aalto University.
catalysti.fi/artist/elham-rahmati
Sepideh Rahaa (b. 1981) is an Iranian-born multidisciplinary artist and researcher based in Helsinki. She examines and questions prevailing power structures, social norms and conventions through her work, focusing on womanhood, storytelling and resistance in everyday life. Her aim is to create a space for dialogue. Her work is informed by feminist politics, decolonial and postcolonial theories and practices as well as social and environmental justice. She is also a doctoral student at Aalto University.
Her work has been on display in exhibitions in Europe as well as East and Southwest Asia: Iran, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Spain, France, Norway, Sweden , Estonia, Germany (Berlin), Latvia, Lithuania and Finland. In 2024, Rahaa held exhibitions in Kiasma and Lahti Museum of Visual Arts (MALVA), and her work has recently been exhibited at Liverpool Biennial (2023) and Helsinki Biennial (2023). (For those who are curious about her name: Rahaa is a Persian and Kurdish woman’s name which means ‘free person’).
Elham Rahmati and Sepideh Rahaa are visual artists based in Helsinki. In their new lines of work, Rahmati and Rahaa use ‘personal’ as a conduit to create visualizations of critical hope amid collective social, political, and environmental struggles. Their works stem from the understanding that struggle is a necessary component of change and that while there are layers to our struggles, they are all interconnected. Oppressive systems attempt to leave those engaged in the fights against different forms of injustice feeling as though hope is not only unreasonable but a detriment to any progress. Artistic expressions founded on stubborn critical hope offer a conceptual space in which emerge new possibilities and potentialities to move through with and beyond despair.
Elham Rahmati’s drawings are part of a broader project called ‘Under the Pretense of Hope’ exploring visual representations of people in protest. When we think about bodies together and what holds them there, what images come to mind? Clenched fists rising in the air; people flooding the streets with their signs and flags; people chanting with determination, rage, and passion; scenes of confrontation between people and authority figures: Moments where possibilities of our bodies acting together are exciting, and joy comes readily. ´In my memory of protests, there are instances of protestors comforting me in my distress, offering a cigarette to use to help relieve the irritation caused by tear gas, letting me into their home or shop while running from the police, hugging me after going through a particularly frightening experience, resting together in the public space amid or in the aftermath of the protest—the list goes on.´
The latter moments are where emotional connections are made and the ties between the protesters become enchantments rather than obligations of occupying the same space together for a common cause or against a common “enemy.” The memory of such moments becomes a resource to tap into through recollection and invocation. Preserving them revives and reaffirms the persistence we need in our collective struggles against structures designed to keep us isolated. The series of drawings in this exhibition illustrate some of these moments to contribute to our imaginaries of hope for liberated futures.
Sepideh Rahaa’s works ‘In Between The Worlds’ are influenced by the personal, familial, and mythological in relation to current socio-political and environmental global contexts. Following her long-lasting artistic research and work around womanhood and representation in contemporary art, in this new line of works she portrays ’self’ specifically as a conduit to create non-linear narratives. Rahaa incorporates ‘self’ as a starting point to move beyond individualism and to speak about a collective experience intertwined with the past and present in relation to the future.
Her exploration and research link womanhood, mythology, rituals, ancestry, and ecological matters. Particularly the tree of life is used as a mythological archetype interwoven with elements of the female body, water (river) and soil in moments of chaos and catastrophe. What does it mean to coexist living far away or nearby (both physically and in respect to time and history)? What visible and invisible linkages, connections and disconnections make this possible or real? Living relationally despite continental, political, societal, and geographical differences, “how to enact a care web that enables hope and interdependent subjects to repair and cultivate resilience?”.
Sepideh Rahaa’s work is supported by the Kone Foundation.
The exhibition has been supported by Taike, Arts Promotion Centre Finland