Yuvinka Medina: Your use of straw and clay to create temporary refuge speaks to the impermanence of home and the experience of displacement. How do material choices influence the way your work tells stories of migration and belonging?
Narges Mohammadi: In my practice, I embrace a deeply personal relationship with materials, treating them not as tools but as collaborators. My role is more guardian than maker, allowing the material to shape the work as much as I do. My process is an act of waiting – an intimate exchange where I listen rather than push things. When I begin, it is not with certainty but by surrendering to the material, to the process, and to the unexpected alchemy where thought becomes form.
This act of careful listening and understanding the needs of the other from a personal and material perspective is imperative in each work. My focus is on what most would discard or not even place a passing glance at – halva that dissolves in the mouth like childhood itself, concrete that binds communities in an unyielding permanence, soap that slowly disintegrates into the palms of forgotten hands – and that moulds them into monuments that reside in your memory. These are not passive materials; they press back and remind me and us that nothing ever holds its shape for long.
Biography
Narges Mohammadi (b. 1993, Afghanistan / Iran) based in the Netherlands. She holds a BA in Fine Art from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (2020), a degree in Modern and Contemporary Art History from Utrecht University (2018), and a degree in Psychology from Utrecht University (2014). Mohammadi has had a solo exhibition at Beelden aan Zee, Scheveningen, Netherlands (2023). Group exhibitions includes Het Noordbrabants Museum, ’s-Hertogenbosch (2024); Copperfield Gallery, London (2023); CODA, Apeldoorn (2023); Garage, Rotterdam (2023) and Museum Tot Zover, Amsterdam (2023). Her work is part of the collection of Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar.
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Image: Narges Mohammadi, Attempts for Refuge, 2021 Photo: Marysia Swietlicka
