"Set against the perilous contemporary global background of upheaval and disaster, Nazanin Noroozi’s Book of Passages and This Bitter Earth explore displacement and instability across land and water. Engaging with the fraught history of the sublime, the personal, public, and historical archival images that she works from often capture mortality against a backdrop of futility as well as celebration in the face of catastrophe. Noroozi presents, simultaneously, a personal and collective memory that conveys a shared sense of loss and longing. Her painterly assemblage of these scenes elicits a feeling of uncanny familiarity and empathy in the viewer, collapsing temporal, social, and geographical divides." A.E.Chapman
The Book of Passages I
2023. Four-color screen print and toned cyanotype prints laid in a drop-spine case lined with blue cloth.
Paper, board, cloth, case dimensions 15.5 x 12.5 x 2.5 inches.
The Book of Passages I is an artist book containing six images that are based on pixelated screenshots taken from NYT’s coverage on stranded migrant boats off the Greek shores.
The clamshell box needs to be held, unfolded, and each print interacted with. The affixed screen-printed image on the left shows a hand in a blue latex glove pointing to an unknown object, possibly a boat. The five toned cyanotype images on the right are almost identical screenshots of a migrant caught in a storm at the shore where the authorities try to rescue him.
