With her work „Stateless“, the Iranian artists Gohar Dashti has analysed the subject of flight and migration. The series of staged photographs attempts to explore the aspects of citizenship, refuge and asylum and the need to find a secure place in a new environment. The spectacular scenery and the carefully staged protagonists confronts us in a restrained way with such situations of searching for an identity and a sense of security after fleeing from wars, violence or repressive regimes.  

„In every corner of the world, devastations of war, massacres, oppression, disease and death are the cause of widespread human disorders with no imaginable ending.

When disasters force people to migration, where would they be welcomed with open arms?

Hoping for a better life, they struggle in a never-ending limbo, a strange place with no identity that does not belong to them.

Maybe it is only at this point, when nature can be a safe haven for these refugees. Sky becomes the ceiling and mountains the walls of their new home; because Nature is the only promising place that shelters these people, an eternal and everlasting refuge.“

– Gohar Dashti

http://www.gohardashti.com

All images © courtesy of Gohar Dashti