Death in Artistic Expression.

Woke up this morning with the feeling that i needed to change my lifestyle or at least my daily habits of doing nothing. I decided to end my consciously doing nothing experiment and drove to the University and while at it stop by at my mechanic friend's shop and see if i can do something there before i headed on to the University, the shop was still closed, it was still too early. So I headed for the MGTF or the Museum gallery at the university (USM). Saw the ongoing exhibit by two Iranian artists entitled "We Were There", Farhad Fakhrian and Elham Shafaei, both students at the Fine Arts faculty doing their PhD at the University Fine Arts department. 
Farhad Fakhrian works of photography were black and white pictures of his father's dead body of which he wrote," I tried no to cry, not because i did not want to but because I wanted to cry in my own way...I went to the bedroom where my father lied back on the floor and a small fan was blowing. His face  was pale and cold and his body was gotten tough. I kissed his forehead and started to take photos with my film and digital camera. I stayed with him until morning and continued photographing. I saved his death with the pictures! Next morning an ambulance came to take his body for burying in the cemetery and nobody knows i had buried him with my tears which dropped from my camera. I followed him everywhere and escorted him till the heaven's gate." His works was entitled; "My father goes to Heaven". The exhibition will last through 11th- 30th of January.


          Farhad Fakhrian.


Elham Shafaei - "I'm Still Crying..."
"I like to cry. Not because I am depressed or emotionally dysfunctional. I cry because I want to see the stain of life on my body and on the world. I cry because i want to feel and see the absolute proof of my life.
Yet, since tear is a part of the body that leaves its container, it is a form of loss. Similarly, since art emerges in the same manner as tear does, that is from within. and art exist as a form of loss. Following this logic then, art is mournful and therefore art making must involve a significant sense of melacholia. It is this relations or intertwining between art, loss and melancholia that i have been exploring in my art through various forms."
                  Elham Shafael