Farbod Fakharzadeh
Cartomania
06.02.-28.02.2021
Though originally just a mass produced commodity intended to carry other
commodities, a shopping cart, through its circle of life, is constantly animated by the cast of social characters who have produced, pictured and pushed it around. It has accompanied numerous groups of people, heard millions of conversations and through its unique direct access has gotten to know countless facts about human life.
The shopping cart has been a versatile carrier of meaning through its history. By connecting it to different aspects of human life we can extract varied meanings and associations. It reminds us of mass consumer culture, can be an icon of homelessness and nomadic urban life, brings to mind instances of state violence or civil unrest and has served as an object of art and activism.
Cartomania is an audiovisual essay, which takes the audience on a journey through the life of the abandoned “Feral Carts of Finland”. It creates an absurdist tale of resistance and resilience whose main characters are the personified feral shopping carts of Finland, depicting a Tragicomic critical analysis of contemporary urban life with all its complexities and paradoxes. The show consists of text, images and video works together with musical and sculptural elements using shopping carts as a base material. Together
these elements attempt to create a mutual multifaceted tale of a life lived beside humans.
Farbod Fakharzadeh (b.1986) is an Iranian artist,curator and storyteller based in Helsinki. In 2018 he received a Master’s degree in Visual Culture, Curating and Contemporary Art from Aalto University. Using mostly unwanted waste materials he assembles objects, moving images and words together to create his multifaceted tales. His works often circulate around the themes of failure, magic and the absurd and he works with history, archives and storytelling as tools for re-imagining the possible and visualizing parallel realities.
The exhibition is kindly supported by Taike–Art Promotion Centre Finland