For Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson four months spent working with the local Victoria Park Community as part of a Spaced arts organisation project Know Thy Neighbour #3 earlier this year, informed her on the notions of place and home that are forming the arena of her Forrest Research Foundation’s Creative and Performance Leadership Fellowship.
The artist was “over the moon” to be named one of two inaugural recipients of the creative research fellowships which kicked off in April to encourage arts and humanities professionals to pursue further study in their areas of interest.
For Ms Eshraghian-Haakansson it’s an opportunity to explore new ground in digital media and in particular the area of virtual reality (VR), looking at the techniques and methods needed to help audiences to become co-authors of her work, rather than just passive bystanders.
She has been connecting with residents and the St Mary’s Outreach Service and Victoria Park Community Centre to further understand the meaning of ‘home’ in relation to local contexts and social identity to identify ways of building empathy.
She’s now reflecting on these experiences through art therapeutic practice with principal industry collaborator Cara Phillips, to create virtual connectivity that explores personal, familial and communal interactions to dislocation.
Her team, including principal academic collaborator Dr Ionat Zurr from UWA’s School of Design, Immerse Australia’s Natalie Marinho, research associate Dr Ali Fardinpour and VR Director of Photography Mahmudul Raz are supporting the research and creative progression of her Fellowship project, ‘Through My Eyes: The Virtual Architecture of Empathy and Connection’.
Blue Room Theatre, 900s (Of Storytelling), 20 - 23 January 2021. Photography by Duncan Wright. (L-R:) Elisha Rahimi, Raneen Kousari, Asha Kiani, Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson
Moving images have always held a fascination for the award-winning young Iranian-Australian Bahá’í video artist, director, and researcher.
As she grew up, and became more deeply aware of her family’s history as refugees of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the source material for her art projects shifted.
Like hundreds of thousands of others, the artist’s mother, uncle, and grandparents were forced to flee to the relative safety of Pakistan to escape persecution, and almost certainly execution, over their Bahá’í faith.
“Every decision my grandma made during that time I’m here because of it, she is why my family is safe,” the 25-yearold, whose family settled in Western Australia, says.
It’s the emotional impact of that conflict and what Ms Eshraghian-Haakansson describes as “the universality of grief and of loss that comes with displacement” that now underpin her work and practice in empathic art-making.
While she has explored different mediums, completing a unit in video art while at university left her convinced, she’d “found her calling” and “love for language”.
The Fine Arts graduate from UWA, who has recently completed her Masters, has exhibited her work nationally and internationally and is the recipient of a growing list of prestigious awards for her work.
Of the current Know Thy Neighbour #3 program, she said she believes it is important in today’s world to “explore communal care as well as self-care when considering our mental wellbeing and sense of hope and home”.
“I try to seek understanding between strangers and develop ways of connecting, especially when disconnection feels so prevalent and there’s social unrest, climate change, the pandemic and a whole host of other things that people are feeling. Art is very potent in poetically realising this thread of understanding,” she said.
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