By KYLE COHLMIA

Last year’s trip around the sun brought about many challenges as we faced nuanced crises and unprecedented events. Through the lens of a global pandemic, increased protests for social justice, and a presidential election in the United States, 2020 demanded us to live life with new perspectives. As I visited Haley Darya Parsa’s solo exhibition, The sun leaves me to find you, at Third Room Project, my first gallery show since the March lockdowns (on a rare but welcomed sunny day in Portland, OR), I was stunned by the gentle power of the installation. As this would be my last show to see in 2020, Parsa’s works also left me with a meditative reflection and a renewed perspective of hope for the new year. 

The first work I noticed of Parsa’s exhibit was a thirty-foot white silk scroll entitled Two Weeks (December 31, 2019–January 14, 2020), that hung from the ceiling and down the side of one of the gallery walls. Once I was able to stand underneath the scroll, I realized all of the inkjet-printed articles articles referenced the 2020 U.S. Iranian conflict and Parsa’s Iranian heritage. For two weeks between December 31st, 2019 and January 14, 2020, Parsa scanned the front page of The New York Times, redacting other articles and documenting the increasing tensions between the U.S. and Iran. In the following interview, I asked Parsa about the significance of the news articles in Two Weeks as well as her cyanotype series that complete this exhibition.

Haley Darya Parsa (HDP): This piece documents the conflict as a whole, the war that was impending, and the tensions coming to a boiling point. This mainly includes the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the airstrikes on bases in Iraq and Syria, the striking of the Ukrainian passenger jet, and Trump’s threats of terrorism and destruction of sacred cultural sites in Iran, which is equivalent to cultural genocide. Since Trump came to office he has been targeting Iran at the expense of the Iranian people with the sanctions, the Muslim ban, withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, and now this. It goes without saying that a war would deepen the distance between me and my family. 

This piece is not as much about these specific events but more so about the long and complicated history between the two countries and the cycle of turmoil. This is displayed visually with the timeline running both forwards and backwards in the installation, creating a loop. There is also one moment where the pages align. 

I was looking at how the media was portraying each country and where the emphasis was put. Some things stuck out to me. Namely, the choice to picture faceless crowds of Iranian people in protest and then publish a standalone illustrated profile on two white soldiers who were injured or killed in the Iraq War in 2008 and who blame Iran as the responsible party. This was on the front page in 2020. The way in which white American soldiers, who willingly enter combat and risk their lives, are portrayed and glorified, versus the unwilling innocent families and children in Iran and the Middle East, is so disappointing. There is no humanity for civilians in the Middle East. 

Kyle Cohlmia (KC): As the silk material acts as an object in this piece as well, I asked Parsa about the significance of the scroll.

HDP: I was thinking about the historical context of a scroll as a record-keeping text. This piece is documentation of a specific window in time. It is factual and objective; however, the only thing I manipulated was in isolating the articles that specifically covered Iran and the U.S.’s relationship, which can then lead to subjective interpretation. 

KC: While Parsa is from Texas and currently resides in New York, Two Weeks speaks volumes to the multiplicity involved with immigration, border crossing, and living in a country at war with your homeland. Two Weeks is also found within this exhibit amongst a series of cyanotype prints on hand-dyed textiles that Parsa created in 2020 during isolation. The softness of the white, silhouetted objects against a deep blue fabric cradles the harsh realities found in the headlines. To the right of the scroll is a cyanotype of a gate titled A borderless world with decorative, curly iron casts. A borderless world is technically the first piece of the exhibit once you arrive inside the gallery, which to me, symbolizes an invitation, perhaps beyond the gallery, to think of borders differently, not as constraints, but as beautiful overtures that easily open to new worlds. 

Additionally, a highlight of this exhibit is Parsa’s piece, Flowers in my backyard (what Amu Jafar left behind and what I keep near me), which lays roughly eleven feet along the Third Room Project gallery floor. This piece contains more of Parsa’s cyanotypes—some exhibiting more exposure to light than others—a collection of objects such as tea bags from Parsa’s father, cherries, jewelry and flowers from her yard that are organized in groups, reminding me of a Foucaultian reference to archaeology and The Order of Things. Parsa emphasized some of the objects within this piece. 

HDP: The jewelry collection holds a lot of sentimental value for me and includes items my family members have given me throughout my life. Most of the pieces are from Iran and made of Iranian gold. One necklace reads “Darya” (my Persian name) in Farsi and was given to me by my cousin and uncle when we met in Turkey for the first time a few years ago. The money clip, rings, and antique Zoroastrian gold necklace were all given to me by my other uncle before he passed away. The gold earrings were my grandmother’s. I wear them all the time and think of my family. 

KC: Part of what is so fascinating about Parsa’s cyanotype work is her use of the sun as material. Depending on the exposure of sunlight, which Parsa also attributes to her Texas-Iranian heritage, where both places experience intense sun, dry heat and “nearly year-long summers,” the objects’ silhouettes are either more or less recognizable. Within these works, Parsa gives up part of her control as the artist to the sun, allowing some images to become ambiguous to the viewer and alluding to the criticism of absolute truth, instead of bringing questions to light, as Parsa describes as “a case for the in-between.” 

HDP: The exposure time is anywhere between five and twenty minutes depending on the weather, how direct the sunlight is, and the kind of imagery and depth that I want to achieve. Including the setup and washing process afterward, it’s under an hour. Although sometimes I will do multiple at once. Usually, I won’t redo cyanotype; I welcome the external factors as part of the work. 

KC: Another series in this exhibit, A window is a barrier to everything except the light, is a compilation of tea bag prints that are installed against the gallery’s back window. The window itself contains abrasions of holes and cracks that have naturally formed over the years and allows for the Portland sun (when it’s not being fickle) to stream through the textiles, further highlighting the materiality of the teabags. 

HDP: It’s funny because the tea bag cyanotypes always looked like windows to me—their vertical rectangular shape and the blue and white cloudlike formation within each pocket. I referred to this cyanotype series as the “tea bag windows” before they had a title and before this exhibition. 

When I saw the layout of the space I knew that I wanted to install them on the windows. What I didn’t expect was the way the tea bags interacted with the bullet holes. The tea bag circles mimicked the bullet holes and the strings mirrored the cracks. The teabags began to represent houses or people—individuals, pairs, families—and the bullet holes became the violence and separation forced and inflicted upon families. The piece became a lot more emotional and powerful. 

The sun leaves me to find you is a timely exhibit, one that not only acknowledges the year anniversary of the U.S.-Iranian conflict—a conflict that has seemingly since been forgotten by the media—but a series of works that emphasize a newfound perspective: connection. The individual pieces, while meditative in nature, provide viewers with a quiet solitude as we look to a new year, reminding us of the need for collective change that 2020 has brought to the forefront. Parsa’s works decenter us, challenging us to think about the blurring of borders and the concept of sharing, what Parsa calls “thoughtful participation,” as we face the spread of a global pandemic and ecological changes in the anthropocene era. As the sun sets in our own world and on a new year, Parsa’s work begs us to think about where it’s going next, who and what it will impact, and “What would happen if we shared it”? 

The sun leaves me to find you by Haley Darya Parsa is on view at Third Room Project December 4, 2020 through January 11, 2021. Viewing times are Friday: 5–8, Saturday: 1–5, Sunday: 1–5, Monday: 5–8. Hours for the exhibition are as follows and can be scheduled through Calendly here. Additionally, you can view these artworks online at www.thirdroom.net. Zines of an interview between Parsa and Carlotta Wald can be downloaded online or picked up in person at Third Room. 

Kyle Cohlmia was born in Stillwater, OK. She received a B.A. in Art History and Italian with a minor in English from the University of Kansas and an M.A. in Instruction and Curriculum at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Kyle has worked at various art museums and galleries including the Denver Art Museum, Oklahoma Hall of Fame, and most recently, as Curator of Exhibitions for the Melton Gallery at the University of Central Oklahoma. She is a previous fellow of Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s Art Writing and Curatorial Fellowship and has written for various art publications including Art Focus, Art 365, and Art Discourse. Kyle is currently living in Portland, OR, working toward her second M.A. in Critical Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art. Pronouns: she/her