Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist, Sara Mozafari, was born in 1981 in Tehran, Iran. Having grown up through the war between Iran and Iraq and the suppression of the political and social activists, religious minorities, and women, social issues became the primary concern in her life, and they reflected on her artworks. After immigrating to Canada in 2006, her factual perceptions from her home country were arrowed to the memories she has and the news she is receiving from media on an everyday basis. Her current practice is focused on recognizing space, displacement, and memory in diverse aspects of human identity and social relations.

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“Projection of Nine Thousands of Memories” is a performance installation aiming to exemplify the relationship between space, memory, displacement, and identity. As a woman, through immigration, art, and architecture lenses, I intend to address how I move back and forth between the real world and the mind world to create an imaginary world to reconfigure my situation in society and develop a sense of belonging. The piece examines an art exhibition featuring a performance installation to articulate three different spaces inspired by Edward W. Soja, Henry Lefebvre, Homi Bhabha, and self-experience: the first space or real space, the Secondspace, or memory-attached unattainable space, and the Thirdspace, or imaginary space that emerges from the first and the second space through the process of Thirding. By using Muqarnas as a metaphor representing a memory-attached space existing in my mind, and SiahChador, in the context of a veil representing my memories, and, in the context of a tent representing a home or a shelter, my goal is to express my notions about displacement and memory impacts on identity and social relations and my struggle of finding a place to call home. The piece applies the projection of Muqarnas as a geometrical and spatial allegory to carry autobiographical and cultural stories and memories. It conducts Muqarnas’s effective conversion, innovation, and transformation capability to convey the idea. It also defines the poetic, metaphoric, and political characters of Siah Chador in the sense of a black veil and a black tent.