The Life of an Itinerant through a Pinhole by Behzad Khosravi Noori

Gulf Photo Plus is delighted to announce “The Life of an Itinerant through a Pinhole by Behzad Khosravi Noori” an exploration of the archives of self and family. Behzad K. Noori’s The Life of an Itinerant through a Pinhole analyses photographs made by his grandfather, Gholamreza Amirbeigi, between 1956 and 1968. We begin in post-World War II Tehran, using his grandfather’s local images of working-class agency to consider an unconscious colonial memory and its formative influence on modern, global southern subjectivity. What anchors this narrative is the creation of the handmade camera "Rooh Kitch" روح کیہچ, meaning Soul Catcher in Urdu. Noori’s solo exhibition hinges on Amirbeigi’s auto-ethnographic methods, highlighting the historical and geographic reverberations of a bygone Iranian era in the present.

Artist Statement:

Behzad Khosravi Noori, PhD is an artist, writer, educator and necromancer.

His research-based practice includes films, installations, and archival studies. His works investigate histories from The Global South, labour and the means of production, and histories of political relationships that have existed as a counter narration to the east-west, North-South dichotomy. By bringing multiple subjects into his study, he explores possible correspondences seen through the lenses of contemporary art practice, proletarianism, subalternity, and the technology of image production. He analyses contemporary history to revisit memories beyond borders, exploring the entanglements and non/aligned memories. Through artistic research, Behzad Khosravi Noori uses personal experience as a springboard to establish a hypothetical relationship between personal memories and significant world events between micro and macro histories. His works emphasise films and historical materials to bring questions such as what happens when the narration crosses the border and what the future of our collective past is. In his practice, he reflects upon the marginalia of artistic explorations in relation to art, the history of transnationalism, and global politics.

His works have been presented at the Venice Biennial, the Ural Industrial Biennial, the Art Encounter Biennial Timosoara, Islamabad Art Festival, Survival Kits Riga, WHW Zagreb, Malmö Art Museum, Marabouparken Stockholm.