Alef / آ

“Alef” is Kimia Kamvari’s second solo exhibition in the city of San Sebastián. The exhibition is divided into two parts. The first part features the work Negative Landscape, a photographic series focused on sinkholes that the artist began photographing in 2019 on the Iranian plateau. The series comprises 73 photographs of this geological phenomenon, in which the dryness of the earth eventually causes holes of varying sizes to form. The second part of the exhibition revolves around a tree—the willow—whose physical presence is represented in the gallery by 80 kilos of willow charcoal, while its representation takes shape in a series of drawings. Among them, one stands out for having been drawn with the only pencil in the museum’s collection (E-002750).

Alef is the first letter of the Persian, Arabic, and Hebrew alphabets, and “The Aleph” is also a well-known short story by Jorge Luis Borges. As both a letter and a narrative element, “aleph” symbolizes the beginning—the energy that holds infinite possibilities. Alef is also the first letter of the word “azadi,” which is part of the Kurdish slogan “Zhin, Zhian, Azadi” (Woman, Life, Freedom), which spread during the protests that took place following the murder of Jina Mahsa Amini in Iran.

Poetics of the Sinkhole. A. Keikhaee