2013, Dual channel video installation TRT / 21 minutes (loop), Color, Iran

A reflection on the place of (migrant) workers in modern society as well as an observation of the foundations of our cities and our cemeteries. The two things that strike me most in Tehran, and a recurring obsession in my work, is how life, labor, and death co-exist on one plane. The workers are always digging up streets, endlessly working towards renewal, replacement, resurfacing the scars of the city. The massive cemetery is also in constant construction and expansion, and I never quite understood how something so mysterious and spiritual as death could become somewhat of a construction site or chain of “production” for the newly dead, who in Islamic tradition, must be buried very quickly after death. Within all of this, the workers, whether using shovels on the streets or in the cemetery, go unseen by the population around them… they build what we use, and yet, are ignored from the social knit.

The city is in constant re-construction, constantly growing, as is the cemetery. The thousands of holes dug in advance, waiting for their dead, reflects on the city’s own expansion and a need for “new ground”. The (Afghan and Kurdish) migrants who make up the majority of the construction work force continue to strive over this expansion, while they are not even considered citizens like other Iranians.

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