Alma

“Alma” carries two meanings: in my mother tongue, Azerbaijani, it means “apple”; in Spanish, it means “soul.” The work began in 2013 during my residency at Fabrica, the United Colors of Benetton research center. In the video, I appear nude behind a pane of glass, looking out with an expression of innocence. With a brush, I begin to paint a chador over my face. Gradually, the black form expands, covering my hair, my body, and finally erasing my face. The act became a quiet but potent reflection on how the mandatory hijab erases personal identity.

Because of the sensitivity of the subject and my position as a Muslim woman living in Iran, the work could not be shown publicly. For six years, I refrained from performance art entirely — distancing myself from using my own image or body as a medium.

In 2019, invited to the Live Action Performance Festival, I decided to return to performance art by transforming “Alma” into a video-performance hybrid. In a private showing, the audience was asked not to take photographs due to the work’s sensitivity. As the video ended, frozen on the image of the chador without my face, I stood from my chair. With a brush and black paint, I aggressively covered the projected image until nothing remained but darkness.

For me, the “apple” in Alma is the forbidden object — the thing that, once imposed, brings suffering. This work is both a reclaiming of my image and a confrontation with the structures that attempt to define, restrict, and erase it.

In 2024, I performed “Alma” once more at Kates-Ferri Project in New York City, continuing its evolution as a living act of resistance, reclaiming presence in the face of imposed absence.