Including printmaking on textiles, photographs, videos, installations, and a sculpture, this project takes place at the intersection of visual culture, revisionist historiography, and urban sociological studies, and addresses the modernization and industrialization that have shaped everyday life in contemporary Iran.
It focuses on two modern establishments in the northern Iranian city of Qaem-Shahr: Nassaji Qaem-Shahr Football Club and Nassaji Mazandaran Textile Industries Company.
Founded in 1930 as part of the modernization initiatives in Iran, Nassaji Mazandaran Textile Industries Company was the largest textile manufacturing plant in the Middle East. For generations, its factories have played an essential role in many aspects of life in Qaem-Shahr, including its economy and city started at seven in the morning with the sound of the factory whistle. In addition to the native residents of the city, individuals and families moved in from surrounding cities to work in the factory. For successive generations, migrants from across the country moved to this city, transforming it into a multicultural city. However, in recent years, much of its production lines have been shut down and abandoned, leaving behind a population once dependent on the economic opportunities it provided: jobs were lost, agricultural production, especially cotton farming, had to be cut down, and many of the people employed in the plants had to migrate elsewhere.
but the most important reason can be the privatization of the factory. After the factory’s closure, the social and economic life of the city came to a standstill. A considerable number of factory workers example, the rate of birth defects reaches the highest level in Iran. Plant #1 was closed, and soon after, its equipment was trashed and sold. Then plant #2 was completely demolished. Based on the artist’s Plant #3 remaining operational, employing a mere 270 people, compared to thousands that once worked in the company. As of now, the sole product of the factory is Kafan, a cloth used to wrap a deceased person’s body in Islamic practice.
garbage. Scavengers gather the last remnants of the factory and earn only a couple of dollars per day. As a group of these scavengers once mentioned, they believed they were making a living from the industrialization and modernization process of the whole nation. Therefore, most of the remaining land, especially its largest area that hosted Plant #2, is now used as waste dumping sites, where poverty has led many to search through the trash.
“The Weaving Mother,” a sculpture that once sat in front of Plant #2 and was believed to be symbolizing both the factory and the city, was removed as part of the dissolution of the company, initially moved to the city’s leading waste management site, and then to the city’s beltway, receiving much damage.
All along these tragic events, Nassaji Qaem-Shahr Football Club became a new symbol for the city, with its residents rediscovering their collective bitter memories and joys, reliving moments from the past through the team’s life. The club has been transformed into the living memory of the city’s inhabitants. Voluntarily, they take care of what the club needs to function. Every weekend, they stand historical memory of the city and the factories: “O! Nassaji: the hope of an exhausted city, my life is tied to you.”
This exhibition visits the factory, the team, and the sculpture of the weaving mother to explore the lost factory sites, workers’ past and present lives, the statue of the weaving mother, and Nassaji Qaem-Shahr Football Club.
