Maryam Palizgir

The issues of women’s substance addiction as both physical and emotional pain is a subject matter that prompts me to seek its social impacts and far-reaching effects. Examining to what extent a visual imagery collaboration can be beneficial in a social disorder recovery pathway. Although addiction associated with mental health disorders, trauma, grief, violence, sexual/physical assault that can be derailed the hopes and dreams of a person, it can be seen as a possibility of personal empowerment in challenging times through art expression. Pain coexists with social disorders. When words are powerless to depict this pain, an alternative means of communication to audiences is the performative representation of the matter by collaborating with individuals who are still suffering from this pain. The video performance can expose performers hardship and concurrently embrace pain as an aesthetic and ephemeral experience that can regain a feeling of wholeness, individually, and as part of the larger society. Intimacy to vulnerability implies social damages that give birth to somethings that are not visible by themselves and simultaneously embraces the pain of vulnerability that can empower individuals who are wrestling with social stigma, fear, shame, guilt, and risks. The piece is deeply rooted in collaborators’ experience and memories and intends to indicate controversial social issues by referencing the complexity of pain, vulnerability, and change. It invites viewers to explore the perception of complex contemporary identity and its challenges through an amalgam of soft, delicate, flexible, and feminine quality of spandex sheer fabric with rough, masculine quality of the wooden frame and metal nails.