Tales of migrant women from Silk Road countries go on display at PNCA
The Iran-born Austrian curator, photographer and artist Maryam Mohammadi on Monday along with Charge d’Affaires of Austrian Embassy MrHannesMachor and Director General of the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA) MrAyoubJamali inaugurated the photo exhibition titled ‘Once there was, and once there wasn’t – Styrian Tales from the Silk Road’ focusing on the Silk Road countries’ Fairy Tales as narrated by female migrants now settled and living in Austria.
Herself an immigrant, Maryam Mohammadi said the project was close to her heart and for it she picked the migrant women’s tales who were born in different Silk Road countries and currently living and settled in the Southern Austrian state, Styria which is also her home. They are from Iran, India, China, Mongolia, Georgia and Greece. From each story, Maryam Mohammadi picked two scenes and used staged-photography to visualize them—a technique she has been using for the last 20 years.
Maryam said in fact there were 14 countries along the Silk Road but initially she had picked 6 of them for the exhibition. One could see the ‘fairy tale’ titles given to each story, for instance, the two pictures on China’s fairy tale were titled ‘Moon Fairy,’ Iran’s fairy tale was titled ‘Simorgh.’ Likewise, the Georgian fairy tale ‘Flea & the Ant,’ the Indian fairytale ‘A Lesson for the Kings’ , the Mongolian ‘The Unstoppable Grey Old Man’ and the Greek ‘My Lady Sea’ were there to charm the visitors.
In this way Maryam has tried to highlight the culture, traditions, unique history and anecdotes of these wonderful countries. For each Fairytale there was a QR code that allowed the visitors to listen to the story in English or German (Austria’s national language).
