Elsa Hashemi
Everyday Practice
30×40
Acrylic-Calligraphic Canvas
$ 1,770
1/3
Everyday Practice
My artistic practice has been always coming from the life itself; what Martin Heidegger calls ‘Dwelling Poetically on Earth’ which makes our presence more important and motivates us to feel and be-in-the- world. So, whatever I have tried to depict in my art is so much related to the idea of connection and reconnection to life itself. As you can see in the pictures, I did a project in which I portrayed myself every day for 30 days like a one-month life in a person’s calendar. Generally, people are so busy with their routines that they usually forget to pay attention to the things they do on a daily basis. By this project, I aimed to redirect their attention from their routine life into some daily rituals which are taken for granted and usually ignored by many of us. To do so, I stood in front of my own camera while using or wearing everyday materials and accessories in my apartment and took a picture of me with all those accessible materials found in all apartments. In another words, I used very uncommon/yet handy accessories (not beautiful props/gears in a photo studio) to show how evident these reminders are; however, we rarely pay attention to them. Moreover, I took pictures of me every day for 30 days to show how important it is for us to repeat and follow these rituals on a daily basis as if they are on our checklists and accordingly, we need to include them in our schedules. My intention was ‘Bringing nontypical habitual activities to the lists of tasks people do every day’ and I tried to depict it in the simplest way possible.