Elika Hedayat

“For years, in my artistic practice and especially through my drawings, I put on scene an imaginary world that reflects a system of power in search of utopia. A system fascinated by modernity, technology and the media. In my work, we see that this ideological system appears deformed until it finds itself mutilated. Therefore, by ceaselessly striving towards utopia, it gives birth to a chaotic and grotesque world – a real dystopia.

With this project, I set out to follow the course of three men: Ismail, Alireza and Hadi – the main protagonists of the film TAN who were also my models. These men are at once similar in their relation to the sacred body and opposed in their journey; Ismail and Alireza are part of a group of the mutilated; made up of former soldiers of the Iran-Iraq war who practice collective prayers under the waters of the Persian Gulf. Ismail is the founder of this group and Alireza, its youngest member. He did not make war, but was mutilated ten years later. Hadi is a young worker who practices bodybuilding. He is the champion of his province. The cult of the body became its religion.”

Elika Hedayat lives and works between France and Iran. After studying at Teheran University of Art, she joined Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 2004 (Christian Bernard’s seminar and Annette Messager’s workshop). She graduated from ENSBA in 2008 with the congratulations pf the jury, and subsequently joined the Studio National des Arts Contemporains du Fresnoy (Promotion Pina Bausch, 2009-2011). Her work was presented at the Mohsen Gallery, Teheran, Iran(2017); the WOOYANG Museum of Contemporary Art, South Korea; the Daegu Kyungpook Art Museum, South Korea; the People’s House, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (2016); the Maison Rouge, Paris, France (2014) and Drawing Now FIAC Paris, France.