Name | Sofi Basseghi

Country | Australia

DOB | 1984.01.24

Email | sofi.basseghi@gmail.com

Curriculum Vitae | Click Here

Statement | Sofi Basseghi

Sofi Basseghi is a Multi Media artist whose video and photographic work has been exhibited in venues and galleries throughout Melbourne as well as Tehran, Iran.

Born in Tehran she moved to Melbourne when she was fourteen and found herself somewhat misplaced. A few years after she was accepted at the Media Arts course at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) she pursued her photographic interests working with ideas of misplacement and the influence of architecture and landscapes in different countries on individuals. Sofi then incorporated her photographic skills into video and film projects leading her to participate in a group video installation that was exhibited in the Tehran Museum of Contemporary art.

After achieving academic results that placed her in the top fifteen percent of all university students together with obtaining a First Class Honours degree she is now completing her final year of a Master in Fine Arts at RMIT.

Basseghi has used herself in a number of her works however her 'self' is not the central character. The work is based predominantly on real and fictional stories born of experiences and situations arising from the cultural, religious and social climate people find themselves in. It also relies greatly on the people who act in her videos. The chosen characters have all had a dramatic life change at some point in their lives, which plays a significant part in her narrative building.

Her practice looks at the structure of society and the role, often imbalanced and misplaced that male and female play, particularly in Iran and the Middle East. There is also a focus on theatricality and the performative. When tackling issues such as the role of the male and the female in society in the Middle East, the concept embraces a political nature and becomes somewhat 'fragile'. Basseghi escapes this fragility through the use of 'exotic' imagery to further explore the desire to cross boundaries and question cultural and traditional mores.

The Dance, 4'40min, 2006
The Dance is a short response to depictions of familiar yet strange and frightening visions of mass religious hysteria. Men particularly perform this ritual publicly as the women admire silently. These images are contrasted by a woman dancing in solitude in a serene, mystic and sensual interior enclosure of a cave in a southern island of Iran, Kish.

This work is an artistic impression of the complexity of society where women's rights are menacingly violated. At the same time it portrays both a collective and individual struggle for contemporary social and cultural freedom.