Sareh Imani

My project, Kindred Stitches, is a three-channel video installation in which I address ideas about parenting and gardening, aging and mortality through a multi-layered narrative. The recently imposed travel affecting eight countries, including Iran, created even more distance between me and my parents and helped me reflect on my familial relationships. The first video is a recorded conversation between my parents and me about a sick cactus. They told me stories about how they previously saved cacti and gave me advice on how to save mine. Reviving the plant is a metaphor for care, kinship and the repair of shattered connections. The second video shows a reconstructive ear surgery performed by my father, which I documented in the surgery room five years ago. In this surgery, a dismembered ear is being reconstructed using the patient's rib cartilage. In Iran, sanctions make artificial ear prosthesis inaccessible, which is why physicians use this antiquated method. The third video shows me in my studio, trying to mend a sculpture: a broken cast of my mother's back.