On November 25, 2024, during Orange the World Day, the global campaign against violence against women, alderman Care Ronald Buijt announced the arrival of a special and unique monument. The sculpture is made by visual artist Narges Mohammadi and will be given a AAA location on the Coolsingel. We are proud that we can present the design today, March 8, 2025, International Women's Day. SIR asked Narges three questions.
The strength of your work lies in, among other things, linking your personal story to important, current social issues. In light of the new artwork that you are going to realize, could you say a bit more about that?
My work comes from my personal history, shaped by experiences in two very different cultures. Yet it touches something larger, something we all share, something that exists both inside and outside of us. The political is personal, and the personal is political. What happens in society affects us all, in one way or another. Ultimately, I am just an artist. I can only make tangible what is happening inside me. I think that when you have experienced something like that, you have a very different relationship to the work and the way you express it. Objects from my own memory become symbols that stand for something much larger than myself. They relate to the memories of others. By offering openness, I hope to invite others to make space for similar feelings – of sadness, fear and powerlessness, but also of hope and longing. It is almost a way of saying: “It’s okay. If I can do it, you can too.” I don’t mean this in a didactic way at all, but mainly as a way of giving strength.
In previous works of art such as Passing Traces are you playing with the contrast between the presence and absence of objects by means of hollowing out. What meaning do you place in this?
In Passing Traces (2020) I first thought about 'negative space' - the air around objects with a solid shape. It was too difficult to give direct shape to the emotional emptiness after the loss of a loved one. When someone is no longer there, their absence continues in everything: in sound, in air, in physical matter, but also slowly in your memories and in every future thought. By reflecting on this, I discovered that shaping the space around objects was the only way to make the loss tangible. So I shaped the air around a chair and left out the chair itself. I make emptiness a carrier of meaning. You only really miss something or someone when you experience their physical absence. With my work I want to draw attention to that which you would rather forget, that which is deeply hidden or invisible - that which you may not be allowed to be. As someone who had a difficult childhood, I know what it feels like to be invisible. Because of our history of flight, I was unable to go to school until I was eight. Making art has become a way for me to live, to exist. It allows me to discover and observe the world with an almost childlike gaze, to question what we take for granted. In this way I try to create space for introspection, change and growth.
The grandeur and materiality (halva, loam) of your artworks quickly give them a monumental character. What is the significance of size and material in your work, the new memorial in particular?
My art is indeed often grand in scale: I work with 700 kilos of halva, tons of concrete and hundreds of kilos of clay. I can't do something like that alone. In the beginning, collaboration was a necessity, but it has now become an essential part of my practice, something I am increasingly exploring. Although my work often has a monumental character, I use materials that everyone knows, that people can handle or that are easy to use. It is precisely this monumentality that ensures that the work enters into a physical relationship with the body; you have to relate to it. This certainly applies in relation to the new memorial, where all the different parts are based on lifelike dimensions. The artwork Bag for example, has exactly the dimensions of a real bag – it is not enlarged or reduced. With this I hope to reduce the distance between the artwork and the viewer. In a way I am saying: this could be your bag too. You, or someone around you, may also be directly or indirectly confronted with unsafe situations, such as domestic violence or gender-related violence.