Tehran-born, Los Angeles–based artist Gelare Khoshgozaran joins us for a special monographic screening of their work, presenting films in which landscapes both real and imagined make visible the personal impact of displacement and broader legacies of imperial violence. The artist has explored these themes throughout their practice, in projects that delve into, for example, the afterlife of the shuttered Iranian embassy in Washington, DC, or the minutiae of navigating sanctions through the United States Postal Service.
Medina Wasl: Connecting Town (2018) traces uncanny echoes between the desert landscapes of Southern California and the Middle East over decades of agricultural, architectural, and military interventions, from the mass importation of palm trees to the development of military bases intended to simulate Middle Eastern villages. Dressed as an Iranian solider from the Iran-Iraq War and equipped with a 16mm camera, Khoshgozaran filmed visitors intermingling with combat training in one such mock village-turned-tourist-destination in the Mojave Desert. Juxtaposing this artificial landscape with audio testimonies from US veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the film underscores the tenuous relationships between memory, imagination, and place.
From these dislocated geographies, Khoshgozaran turns inward with their newest film, The Retreat (2023). Drawing on the work of Catalan psychiatrist Francesc Tosquelles, the artist brought individuals experiencing exile from different parts of the world together for a gathering in southern France, near the hospital where Tosquelles practiced in the 1940s and ’50s. Making connections between the clinical and political dimensions of asylum, Khoshgozaran seeks to reorient our understanding of exile through its effects on the bodies and minds of the displaced. The Retreat unfolds like a dreamlike exercise in group dynamics, observing members sharing their experiences navigating different asylum systems, and capturing everyday actions that forged affinities among the group. Nurturing bonds fostered outside the realm of nationality in the process of its own making, the film embodies new conceptions of home, and belonging, beyond borders.
The screening concludes with a work-in-progress 35mm slide essay-film and a conversation between Khoshgozaran and Sophie Cavoulacos, associate curator in the Department of Film.