Rosha Yaghmai’s installation in a sideroom of its own, Slide Samples (Lures, Myths), is immediately visually striking. With the soft low light, the room is quiet with abstract shapes cast from a slide projection filling all the walls. As your eyes adjust to the darkness, the rhythmic clicking of the changing slides becomes hypnotic, inducing a peaceful, contemplative mood.

Slide samples consist of abstract images constructed onto photographic slides by Yaghmai’s father when he first arrived in the states from Tehran, Iran. They were his attempt at coming to terms with a new culture. These images are then projected through a standing sculpture of window-like glass panels, which are embedded with objects and artifacts from Yaghmai’s own life and experiences. Viewers are only able to see the projection from the slides through the panels of the sculpture, mirroring Yaghmai’s process of viewing the images her father created through her own specific perspective.

Embedded object

Memory and experience, two intangible concepts, are captured through tangible and perceptible objects and images in this installation. Yet, neither Yaghmai’s personal items, nor her father’s slide images, are fully intelligible. It is difficult to make out a clear, cohesive picture from the abstract light, colors and shapes from the projections, and the items embedded in the glass—unnamed flowers, spectacle lenses, pieces of wire mesh—are fragmented and decontextualized. Memory, after all, is never cohesive or linear. Rather, it is a collage of sights, sounds and feelings that we attempt to piece together and understand. Despite this apparent lack of coherence or linearity, Yaghmai’s piece is therapeutic, and leaves one in a quiet and thoughtful mood.