Helia Chitsazan-Visual Artist

When I was a kid, we drove to the Tehran International Airport with the whole family to drop off my uncle. When he was leaving, He said I would be back soon. It was a lie. He emigrated to Canada and didn't come back for ten years. The emigration of my beloved brother followed this. And now I'm the one who left everything back at home. This constant ambiguous feeling of absence and loss was not specific to me, as losing loved ones has become the norm in my country due to immigration and the threats of war. I chose art, particularly painting, to overcome this lost part of me to find something that stays with me.

 

To me, art is a language to hold emotions and complications I experienced growing up in Iran's specific cultural and social circumstances.  I try to make a world. This world is somewhere between reality and imagination in which time doesn't pass; everything will last forever.  

 

I am interested in human expression and body language. I find it the most powerful and honest reflection of the inner states of the human condition. 

Growing up in a society with different levels of verbal oppression has made me interested in communicating and expressing myself through various other ways but not talking and art is one of them. 

I am also interested in the remnants of people, spaces, shadows, and walls because they can carry personal history.   

With these materials in my hands I try to narrate stories and dilemmas of the life of a woman with specific challenges.