l In his In a dream, or rather in a state intermediate
between waking and sleeping, the totality of creatures
is revealed to Ruzbehan of Shiraz as though they were assembled within a
house; there are many lamps which give off a bright light, but a
wall prevents him from reaching them. Then he mounts to the
terrace of the house which is his own dwelling place; there he
finds two Sufi shaykhs and in whom he recognizes his own image.
Together the three partake of a kind of mystical
repast, consisting of pure wheat bread and oil so subtle that it
was like a pure spiritual substance. Subsequently, one of the
two shaykhs asks Ruzbehan if he knows what this substance
was. The shaykh informs him that it was

To live in a fragmented world is to inhabit the threshold of collective memory, sensory
displacement, and the radical necessity of care. The Celestial Oil is an exhibition that
positions the gallery as a liminal chamber—a space suspended "between waking
and sleeping”.
Fateme Kazemi’s exhibition operates as a living laboratory, mapping how history is
not merely recorded, but felt, tasted, and shared. To lose sight of the North means no
longer to be able to distinguish between light and shadow".
Through an experimental fusion of video art, texts, and installation, Kazemi collapses
the distance between personal biography and collective inheritance.
By assembling data, original footage, and found archives, she borrows the "familiar
and strange tastes" of faraway childhood memories, transforming the gallery into a
site of intersecting emotions where sadness and happiness do not compete, but
coalesce.
This exhibition is an invitation to cross the threshold from passive observation to
active dialogue, proving that our most intimate recollections are the very materials
needed to bind us together.
Drawing on the concept of the, the program creates an agonistic public space where
diverse perspectives coexist, and urban conflicts become opportunities for dialogue,
reflection, and collective imagination.
Moving between questions of collective stewardship, ecological interdependence,
plant agency, exclusion, care, and imagination, the exhibition seeks to rethink the
craftsmanship of resistance beyond familiar binaries such as nature and culture,
human and nonhuman, wildness and cultivation.
Rethinking the binaries,This exhibition is an attempt to view our relational space as a
"crossroads" for emancipatory struggles.
The works in this exhibition do not stand as static monuments to the past, nor do they
remain confined within gallery walls. Instead, they demand an active, sensory
engagement with our present, extending directly into the city's changing urban
ecology.
Through Observation Gatherings, community workshops, poetry readings, sharing
libraries, and communal cooking sessions, the project swaps a distant viewpoint for
deeply grounded, practical care.
Within this framework, Ecological Grief invites participants to challenge
human-centered perspectives. Here, the acts of chopping, seasoning, listening,
performing, and remembering become radical methods of mutual sustenance.
As you step away from these installations and return to the street, the grid, and your
own domestic spaces, the ethos of this environment goes with us. It challenges us to
look at our everyday rituals—the flavors we carry, the stories we whisper, and the
gardens we cultivate—not as isolated, private habits, but as shared cultural ground.
In a cultural landscape that often isolates the individual from the community, Kazemi
and her cohort of creative collaborators remind us that the work of building a
supportive world begins at the table and in the soil. The archive is open, the garden
is activated, and the collective history is ours to flavor together.
Sheida Ghomashchi
Summer 2026