Helia Pouyanfar
Born in 1995 in Tehran, Iran, Helia Pouyanfar immigrated to California in 2014 and received her B.A. in studio art from the University of California, Berkeley in 2019, specializing in contemporary sculpture and installation art. She is currently residing in Northern California as a first-year MFA candidate and graduate researcher at the University of California, Davis.
IG: @heliapouyanfar
I spent three years of my youth as a refugee, and after this experience and immigrating to the United States, I realized that “home” has been forever altered for me: my home country abandoned me like an unwanted child, and I may never be considered fully “American.” The trauma of being displaced heightened my awareness of the “in-betweens.” So often we are not fully here or there – this is how I became interested in ideas of place and our profound relationship to it. I create sculptures that address issues of placement, sculptures that hope to eventually lead us to a deeper level of understanding of our liminal existence through the somatic information they provide. I’ve focused my practice on creating artworks that are concerned with re-creating history within a contemporary context to shed light on the politics of immigration and the ensuing injustices that is inflicted upon multitude of people.
I was born into a lower-middle-class family of Kurdish descent in Iran. My grandfather, a self-taught carpenter and devout Sufi, loved having me in his humble woodshop and telling me stories while he would carve sculptures. My grandmother, a resilient woman who persevered through years of abuse and is now a seventy-eight-year-old independent business owner, taught me about the importance of employing flexibility in the face of difficulties. Both of these people who had a great influence on me were illiterate. Observing how they maneuvered life despite such limitations have inspired me to pursue my dreams undeterred.
I adopted the Bahá’í Faith at age 15: a religion whose followers are barred from enrolling in higher education and are regularly imprisoned for practicing their faith. Choosing the Bahá’í Faith forced my family and me to leave Iran as refugees in fear for our safety and in the hope of having access to higher education. I spent three years chaotically moving from Denmark to Hungary to Turkey. In those years, memories of my grandmother's resilience allowed me to carry on and just as my grandfather turned to his carpentry to express himself despite his illiteracy, I decided to become an artist.
Helia Pouyanfar
There, Now Here Vol. 2, 2021. From The Wind Will Carry the Seed and the Soil series. Resin, cement, bricks, suitcase.
There, Now Here Vol. 2, 2021. From The Wind Will Carry the Seed and the Soil series. Resin, cement, bricks, suitcase.
Walls Have Ears Vol. I, 2021 From Walls Have Ears series. Letters, Photos, document, drywall, studs, wood, straps.
Walls Have Ears Vol. I, 2021 From Walls Have Ears series. Letters, Photos, document, drywall, studs, wood, straps.
There, Now Here Vol. II, 2021. From The Wind Will Carry the Seed and the Soil series. Resin, cement, bricks, suitcase.
There, Now Here Vol. II, 2021. From The Wind Will Carry the Seed and the Soil series. Resin, cement, bricks, suitcase.
What is Rightfully Theirs, by Sahar Razavi, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science; Director, Iranian and Middle Eastern Studies Center
When people are forced to leave their homes, they carry with them fragments of that life which serve as both a burden and armor against the challenges they confront as they break a path for themselves in a new environment which is unfamiliar and possibly hostile to them.
The refugee experience is a story of surveillance and resistance, of fragility and hardness, of contending impulses to remake oneself in a new home and to hold tightly to an identity deeply rooted in place. You may feel as though the pieces you carry with you are at once invincible as immutable elements of your being and also profoundly vulnerable to the harsh light of scrutiny trained on you in your new home, and thus in need of constant protection. The home you have left behind is full of the texture of your being; to lose that necessitates the ability to carry fragments of it in which you can place yourself, your reflection always there even as the scenes behind you shift.
When you leave behind loved ones whom you may never see again, their presence is always felt as though just behind a barrier, a silhouette you can vaguely make out through the textured glass in the door, but you can never quite overcome that separation in order to touch them or hold them again.
When people are forced to leave behind the life that belongs to them, they take with them what is rightfully theirs. They find spaces between walls to hide pieces of themselves they know they must protect; they use a fragmented piece of brick or glass to anchor themselves in time and space; they bring with them pieces of the brick and mortar and plaster that were used to build the home they were forced to leave, even if it means something has to be destroyed in the process. To be a refugee is to viscerally experience your own agency.