Vida Dena

Born in Tehran in 1984, Vida Dena is an Iranian artist and filmmaker who is living and working in Brussels since 2011.

She works with different mediums (painting, drawing, video, film) around themes such as immigration, censorship, dual identity and human rights. You can follow his work on his website: vidadena.com. 

This series is taken from her solo exhibition “My childhood rituals”. Like that of many children, the childhood of Vida Dena has been recorded in photographs. For this set of drawings, Vida Dena started from family photos of her childhood, especially those pictures that ‘fell off the table’ and those that ended up in the shoe box, adding them some magical Persian realism.

In these ballpoint pen drawings, the artist is interfering in the actual photos by using her imagination. She chose these photos purposely because they have a strange, somewhat abnormal essence, a kind of magical reality that gives more
power to the imaginary parts of the works. “Rituals” then is a tricky name she gives to this project to make us believe that these rituals are actually happening in reality in Iran’s exotic culture, which in fact is just a touch of humor by the artist coming from the Middle East who is often perceived as an exotic person.

Living in Europe deprives Vida Dena of direct connection with relatives. The process of making drawings starting from childhood photos is a search for shared experiences with them, her nostalgic feelings for her childhood as well as the life in Iran, her lost and confused identity and the melancholic feelings of happiness and sadness for her past.