FAR BAZAAR 2017 . Association of Hysteric Curators . #HOMEECONOMICS 
January 27 & 28 2017

Shirin Bolourchi and Alex Kay

The Mirror Stage is an installation in two parts. In first part, the viewer is invited to investigate a circular hole in the floor of a classroom in a building  that will be demolished after the exhibition. Excavated remains of the building are wrapped and buried in a traditional Muslim fabric (Kafan) inside the hole. The second part of the installation is located in a yard. A circular shape mirroring the first part made of pieces of blue painter’s tape with a single piece wrapped in Kafan in its center. The piece elevated above the surface carries a miniature shovel on the top.

“The idea of ‘mirror stage’ is an important early component in Lacan’s critical reinterpretation of the work of Freud. […] Lacan proposes that human infants past through a stage in which an external image of the body (reflected in a mirror  or represented to infant through a mother or a primary caregiver) produces a psychic response that gives rise to the mental representation of an 'I'.”

The definition of an ‘I’ in Iranian culture may be represented in transcendency of Rumi.

I am a bird from heavenly garden of paradise,

I am not from this dusty earth.

Where have I come from?

Where do I go?                —Rumi, translated by Shirin Bolourchi