The project It’s not about nothing explores documentary artistic practices in two episodes, making use of both exhibition spaces at the GfZK. The works presented here examine image archives as sites of resistance and as gateways to buried histories.
Pooya Sedighi Mournani works with images of key events in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The material is drawn from state sources, the internet, and social media. Mournani zooms in on details, selects image fragments, and transfers them via laser printing onto support materials such as aluminium or glass. He removes images, including those depicting crowds, protests, violence and destruction, from their original context. From this ongoing image collection, a speculative archive emerges that makes no claim to completeness or truth. He invites us to critically examine the images that surround us: What are we seeing? What does the perspective of a photograph reveal about its creator? Was the photographer part of the crowd, part of the system, or an outside observer? When does an image serve an official historical narrative? And when does it become a documentary tool of resistance? Another series consists of portraits of Mournani’s mother, taken during his visits to Iran. For him, she is both a close companion and a witness to history.