At a time when the lines between real and virtual are increasingly blurred, the latter may appear to be more and more the defining structure of our social condition. But the risk is that by attaching too much importance to it, we end up trapped inside. Melika Shafahi’s exhibition of photographs and videos in Tehran invites us instead to shift our gaze joyfully towards one of the noblest features of artistic creation: its ability both to grow out of encounters, and stimulate new ones. The associations Melika evokes have their roots in her own background, between Iran and France, but also in diverse geographical locations she brings into connection through her perceptions of human relationships and how the material environment interacts with them – in this case the Friche de la Belle de Mai, a former tobacco factory converted into a cultural complex in Marseilles, France, where she was an artist in residence in 2018/2019, and her many trips to the island of Hengâm, in southern Iran. Text from the article "Melika Shafahi: New future – toward an esthetic of associations" Written by Amin Moghadam, Ryerson University, Toronto