Corner of my room
Format: Public Site specific installation
Materials: Reflective film, see through mirrors, light, audio track
Dimensions: 2 x 2 x 3 ft
Year: 2018
Sister installation: and the alleyway to the prison's garden (Brooklyn)
Corner of my room is a site specific public installation located in the corner of a building in the West Village, New York. Paired with its sister installation in Brooklyn, the two titles form an allegory of family relationships in exile and diaspora, questioning how physical distance shapes the fundamental structures of communication and connection between displaced parents and children.
In making this work, the artist sought new means of deeper connection with their own family by interviewing each of their parents. During the conversations, they showed a series of videos depicting abstract interplays of light and shadow, originally filmed from metal and reflective sculptures reacting to light over time in the corner of the artist's studio, and asked two open ended questions: what do you see, and why do you say that. The videos' abstraction evoked architectural or natural landscapes, inducing a sense of losing one's grip on space.
The artist's mother responded mostly with formal descriptions of the light and shadow, interwoven with specific memories and emotional stories tied to fear, sadness, or nostalgia, at times anticipating an imagined future.
Using mirror like surfaces, light, and shadow shaped by the mother's perception of space and recollection of memory, the artist built an infinite cube. An audio component plays fragments of the interview on the sidewalk as pedestrians pass by, activated by both sunlight and two LEDs. As the light source moves, the reflections cast light drawings of fluid forms across the cube's interior wall, emulating the waves of an ocean.
The corner installation activated by static LED light:
Documentation of the cube under its fixed lighting, showing the interior's light drawn, wave like reflections.
Publication
Spreads from the accompanying publication pairing Corner of My Room with its sister installation, and the alleyway to the prison's garden.
In summer 2018, Rostami interviewed both their parents, asking open-ended questions about what they saw while watching a video piece built from reflective materials, light, and shadow. The audio for Corner of My Room carries fragments of their mother's responses.
Audio transcription
I only like the light in it, I don’t like the rest of it
It’s showing the shadows
it wants to make something visible, but if it talks to me with darkness, I have no business with it.
I only will see the light in it
I am inside of an airplane, I look down and I see the clouds
It's a frame to the future
makes one feel that the future is obscure
no one know what will happen, but it’s bright.
It’s a triangle
it’s white and it has a curl,
this other triangle on the other side could be the past.
it could be corner of a room
It is night,
there’s a bed,
and there’s a woman rolling in bed.
Or perhaps it is the sea. But even if it’s the sea, still there’s a person rolling in it.
That time when I boarded on a ship that wasn’t yet traveling. The captain let us in to see inside of the ship. I was looking at the sea behind the window inside the ship.
It is this light that wants to draw the sea from afar,
but it just all might be inside of a room.
That time we were walking in the sea, and we weren’t swimming. All of a sudden, we felt that there’s nothing under our feet.
I wasn’t scared in the beginning and thought I can swim to pass it.
I struggled for a while and come out of the water to take breaths a few times, then I realized I am only getting farther rather than closer. I couldn’t see anyone no longer.
That’s when I felt the fear,
I thought it is the end of the line.
It was only after we managed to get out that I started expressing emotions.
I laughed hysterically. A laugh that I could not stop.
It is so small
It reminds me of all the words that has been said to me and bothered me in the past, but I can’t tell what it is.
the things that one can’t either tell what they are, or forget them completely.
when I remember them it hurts.
I can’t tell what this is but I’ll try to see it as something bright and good.
When it gets repeated. It makes me anxious.
I can’t tell what this is. I am sure it’s inside of a room.
It’s like when you try to find an excuse for all the things that has disturbed you to get rid of them, and to make things transparent.
It is in a very small place, Maybe inside someone’s head?!
Slowly a dark shadow comes and takes over
Sometimes it gets darker. In the beginning it’s confusing and upsetting. But slowly, and slowly it starts illuminating and it opens up. This is like a knot, one knot after another one.
It is a room, with a few poles. I don’t know where this room is.