Meet The Artist - Nikta Mohammadi
About Nikta
Nikta Mohammadi is an Iranian artist and producer based in West Yorkshire, working across moving image, performance, sound and text. Her practice is rooted in her dreams. It examines the relationship between personal and political, outside and inside, private and public, documentary and fiction.
Currently, she is building a body of work that investigates British rural landscape, incorporating literature, myths and rituals from Iran and Britain with an interdisciplinary formal approach.
Through this body of work, she wants to reflect on her fragmented living experience as an outsider. Previously she has worked with The Tetley, Institute of Contemporary Arts and Tate among others.
Instagram: @nik_la_flaneuse
Web: niktamohammadi.com
About Nikta's Work
As part of Developed With The Lowry, Nikta will be developing Memory Stone.
About MEMORY STONE
Memory Stone is a film installation that explores ideas of speculative memory and history, using British countryside as a starting point. Transforming the gallery spaces at The Lowry through highly composed and performative video work and a visceral soundscape, audiences will be immersed in an alternate version of the Northern landscape. The work aims to challenge the perception of the British rural landscape as an idyllic space where time stands still. Memory Stone is part of a larger body of moving image work, which investigates the British rural landscape as a site of absence and loss, incorporating folklore, myths and rituals from Iran and Yorkshire, with an interdisciplinary formal approach. Using this body of work, I reflect on my fragmented living experience as an outsider.
At the centre of the installation there is a film, set around Bridestones moor, West Yorkshire (believed to be a pre-historic site, surrounded by several legends) and a radio navigation station located nearby. It’ll follow a ‘rambler’ wandering this landscape while the navigation aid acts as a trigger, evoking a memory that is removed from our rambler’s consciousness. An ancient dream or a misplaced history, perhaps belonging to their non-existent alien ancestors. This theme links to my interest in ghostly imprints of the past, migrants create on foreign lands. Memory Stone attempts to recreate these memories/histories.
Producer Nuria López de la Oliva
Sound & Music Babak Mirsalari
Supported by Arts Council England
“I am excited and thrilled to begin this journey of reclaiming; to reimagine pasts and recreate futures. The Lowry’s Developed With programme is the much needed structure of support to bring this dreamworld to audiences in Salford and more widely in the UK.” – Nikta Mohammadi