Prita Tina Yeganeh’s work The Sanctum of Qanat is now showing in held by embracing droplets at Lismore Regional Gallery.
The Sanctum of Qanāt is a hand-printed silk textile that reimagines the ancient Iranian water-mono-printing tradition Kāḡaḏ-e Abrī (کاغذ ابری), which translates to ‘cloud-like paper,’ through a contemporary textile practice.
The work takes Qanāt, an ancient Iranian system of underground channels used to access and transport water through arid landscapes, as both a subject and conceptual framework. In describing the work, Prita states “Through Qanāt, my ancestors weaved themselves into the nature of the deserts using their intimate knowledge of landscape, geology and territory. I interpret Qanāt as more than an ancient living process. It offers me the history and origins of my own distant culture and reveals an Iranian identity deeply rooted in ancestral connections to land and place. The Sanctum of Qanāt explores the idea of Qanāt through textiles—my way of re-connecting to my displaced Iranian identity.”
Curated by Jocelyn Flynn, held by embracing droplets explores the idea of mist and fog being embraced as symbols of connection to and by water. Anchored by the hydrological cycles of Bundjalung Country, the artists reveal obscured histories, veiled memories, and embodied understandings of the environment. They harness the transformative properties of water in its various states to explore these connections, reframing narratives of control and containment.
For more information, see the Lismore Regional Gallery Website.
Prita Tina Yeganeh, The Sanctum of Qanat, 2022. 3 x Kāḡaḏ-e Abri print on silk, each 137 x 170cm. Photo: Louis Lim. Courtesy the artist and Onespace Gallery