Maryam Tafakory (1987, Shiraz) is an artist filmmaker whose textual and filmic collages interweave poetry, documentary, and archival and found material. She is based in London and Shiraz. Her broader research explores depictions of erasure, secrecy, [un]touchable, and [un]spoken prohibitions. She has an ongoing body of essayistic videos on representations of women [lack thereof] in Iranian post-revolution cinema.
Nazarbazi
Video, 2022
The film focuses primarily on images of women whose bodies have been erased and victimized in post-revolution cinema and alludes to discreet forms of communication that operate within, yet also circumnavigate the censors. It attempts to touch the spaces we cannot touch – feelings/sensations – but also untouchability beyond physical contact: unspoken prohibitions/regulations that may only be discovered as bodily experiences. The film uses poetry and silence as the only language/s with which we can attempt to touch these spaces of socio-political ambiguities, where micro-resistances can occur.
Irani bag
Video, 2020
Using excerpts of films produced between 1990 and 2018, Irani Bag is a split-screen video essay questioning the innocence of bags in post-revolution Iranian cinema. Collating scenes of mediated intimacy, it's a quietly moving instruction on how to touch without touching. Irani Bag not only exposes a codified vocabulary, it also invites the spectator to reconsider the relationship to (and between) sight and touch.