Passage

Passage | Hanna Mirjanian| Opening: Friday, 28 December 2018, 4 – 8 pm | Exhibition is on view through 20 January, 2019 | Closed on Mondays and Public Holidays

210 , Keshavarz Blvd | Tel: 88977148

This collection of photography with medium format camera is the outcome of my many different trips over several years.

Traveling has always been a refuge for me to distance myself from the noise and fray of the city, without which I could never live. Behind this urban penchant for busyness and excitement, I find a deep human desire for a safety that we have created for ourselves to stay together and to stave off danger, to guarantee our survival!

The growth of our cities and the formation of our civilizations are predicated on such desire for safety. Nevertheless, outside our urban comfort zones, there is always a place for us in the wilderness.

We form groups with fellow travelers to go on short trips into the wilderness, where things are not predictable and possibly dangerous.

I stand in front of the sea for a moment and gaze at the horizon, free from my mind. We start a fire on the beach and I let every grain of sand absorb my physical fatigue. We raise our tent in a green valley near a lake and I breathe in the smell of wild flowers. I stand before a steady mountain and listen to the calming sound of birds.

The whole trip, with all its adventures and moments, stays on in my memory. Memories of an experience that formed in the moment, transformed into another experience, only to vanish and give rise to other experiences soon as I became conscious of the transitory nature of experience, which we call Time, time and again. This time, however, what I experience is of my own choosing.

When the dirt road meets asphalt and we go back to our cities, we harbor mixed feelings. We miss our homes, the one we left behind so many nebulous years ego and the one waiting for us as we turn the key and step into safety.