Memories

Statement:

O Gallery presents “Memories”, a series of sculptures, by Rana Heidarzade (b. 1999 Tehran), forming an immersive installation. This marks the artist’s debut solo exhibition—an autobiographical expression of longing and remembrance.

This body of work is shaped by fragments of personal memory. Her quiet subjects, drawn from everyday life, appear both tender and distant, reflecting a sense of longing that runs through the entire series.

To give form to these memories, Heidarzade works with photographs from her own archive, layering them into delicate compositions where moments seem to hover just out of reach.

The subtle use of translucent resin allows these images to blur and soften, as if seen through the haze of time.

This layering effect mirrors the way memories overlap—how moments from different times imprint upon one another, growing vague yet inseparable.

In this way, material and memory fold into one another, not to preserve the past as it was, but to accept its inevitable fading.

While anchored in personal memory, the series extends a gentle invitation—where private moments, held in feeling, might stir something long unspoken in the viewer.

“I suppose we spend our whole lives trying to relive the past—just for a moment—as it was first experienced, as if holding onto those memories is the only way to preserve our identity.

And yet, in doing so, I find myself afraid not only of losing those memories, but also of the inability to create new ones.”

-Rana Heidarzade, Summer 2025