Navid Sinaki
Medusa of the Roses
Fiction
US – Grove Atlantic
UK – Serpent’s Tail
FR – Le Bruit du Monde
The Infinite Garden
Solo Exhibition
An invented Persian epic revolving around a king and his three male lovers, visualized in four videos re-imagining works from Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture, and Design’s archives, two filmed slide shows of digital ephemera (some real, some invented), and Persian miniature-inspired VHS tapes from (nonexistent) films inspired by the same epic
Two (2) looped single channel horizontal videos
Two (2) looped single channel vertical videos
Two (2) looped single channel “slide show” videos
Eight (8) VHS cases
Clip
Rumi and His Roses
Film
Using love letters tucked in bootleg DVD menus, a gay Iranian recounts his first relationship and its end.
2022 / 7 minutes
Nameh نامه
Series of looped single-channel videos
Persian miniature paintings scrubbed clean of people and queered with turn-of-the-millennium gifs
Sotoun / ستون
Ongoing Series
Memory is reimagined as VHS cases/merchandise towers from a non-existent video store
Pop!
Film
Persian sexploitation and melodramas from the 1960s are re-animated to tell a love story about a trans woman, her murderous twin, and the man they love in the red-light district of pre-Islamic Iran.
2009 / 6 minutes
Brute
Film
The Persian epic of “Leyli va Majnun” is reimagined with two women as the lovers. Leyli’s attempted suicide is interrupted by Death, who entices her with a kiss.
2009 / 5 minutes / 16mm
Disappearing Axis
Series of looped single-channel videos
Videos simulate someone digging through DVD menus that fall into the open mouth of memories with a click, much like a lick, but down the z axis. A DVD menu can be a diary, an archive, and a gesture of “bohzy” (play).
Without Names
Chromogenic Prints
Made under the guidance of photographer Catherine Opie, an early series blossomed into a larger body of work. After the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979, certain films were censored and colored in using black marker. I began taking and coloring in nude photos as a response to a country that criminalizes and/or erases homosexuality. (2010-2013)
The Assumption
Film
A man in conversation with Death recalls the cities, the men, and textures that he loved, as well as those that broke him apart.
2012 / 6 minutes / Pixelvision, VHS, mini-dv, Super-8, digital
Noir Arabesque
Film
An ingénue at a Tehran cabaret falls for a new love, despite threats from a murderous Humphrey Bogart
2010 / 12 minutes
Head
Chromogenic Prints
In response to a hook-up that led to being called a towelhead, I began a series of photos of wrapping/balancing everyday objects on my head for a way to play with the bruise (2010)
