Performance: Stone XXL

STONE XXL
2019-2020

In "Stone XXL," the element of remembrance returns, which again takes the form of a huge boulder that in this performative intervention is literally carried around the city by two volunteers who will leave it unattended only at the moment when fatigue prevails over the will to walk carrying the weight of contemporaneity.

Bahar H.'s performance is the sharing of a toil, the participation in a pain, the collective release from a pain. With Stone XXL Bahar H proposes an intervention in public space that will see her engaged, carrying a stone through the streets of the city.

Bahar H. left Iran in 2013 and has never returned since because she is considered a political dissident for her opposition to the Iranian regime. When the international news returned to Iran-U.S. relations in May 2018, the artist began collecting foreign newspapers that reported news related to her country. Beginning by reflecting on the weight generated to her by reading these news stories, she dipped the pages into water to let them shed the ink of words and become sculptural matter.

Using the papier-mâché technique, he then covered a light iron structure with a mixture of water and paper now forgotten of its information-related origins. The physical lightness of the stone evokes an emotional heaviness that in the duration of the performance ends up weighing down the shoulders and the heart. The gesture of carrying the stone through the streets of the city denotes the need to share the weight generated by the fragility of geopolitical relations and the gravity they have on social balances.

Anyone along the way can take part in the performance, take charge of a collective story and share its effects on their own existences. The emotional weight awakened by the light stone and the sharing of its burden eventually binds and transforms a private pain into a matter of universal concern, through an action that requires daily tenacity and endurance.