I first need to take myself to a space in which I can write

This interview is part of a new series spotlighting PhD projects across Central Saint Martins. In this interview Marketa Uhlirova, Reader in Fashion, Cinema and Visual Studies, speaks to Niloofar Taatizadeh, a current PhD student at Central Saint Martins.

This interview was conducted during the ongoing war in Iran, while Niloofar Taatizadeh was attempting to trace friends and family members affected by the conflict.

How would you explain your PhD to a non-expert?

I explore ideas of translation, layering and repetition through image and materiality. The images and textiles I create are not fixed. I am interested in how translation shifts and expands meanings. Specifically, I am looking at 19th-century Persian paintings from the Qajar dynasty and create laborious hand-made textile pieces from them, which then lead to new images. In doing this I am trying to challenge fixed Western and imperialist ideas of the ‘Other’. My work is a process of reclaiming what has been lost and forgotten.

I always work from a single image and generate potentially endless layers through various digital and analogue processes (including embroidery, weaving and scanning). It’s like peeling back surfaces to go deeper into the images, to create new visions from what is hidden at first glance. It is a dialogue between machine, hand and material.

I am interested in decolonising what I call ‘Eastern materiality’ – which also includes the immaterial culture that is embodied in language, bodily movements, gestures and other expressions. Some of my most recent work is about the gaze – 19th century European travellers and writers sometimes described the Iranians in condescending ways. The paintings I am exploring show figures that are always looking at you. For instance, I took a painting called A Couple Embracing, which was originally made on canvas (though I found it on Instagram). I zoomed into the couple’s faces and made a large textile piece from this image, which I 3D-scanned in a way that made it an incomplete, glitchy image with gaps. I then created new images from that image. Throughout the whole process I have tried to recreate the intensity of the couple’s gaze. To me, it has a force.

What have you been doing recently?

I have mainly been writing my contextual review document – it has been a lot of writing, reading and thinking. But about a month ago, I needed to start making again, so I returned to the workshop – the Surface Lab design workshop at CSM – where I have been working with a digital embroidery machine. The machine is really loud; it produces a kind of white noise, which has become a meditative space for me. It has become a highlight of my making. I have also started experimenting with stitching on paper.

Can you say more about the moment where you needed to go back to making?

What is this relationship between writing and making for you? Do they energise you differently? Writing academically in a second language has been a learning process. I have always enjoyed reflective writing – in fact, I love it – but, for me, everything starts with making. That is where ideas spark from. Reflection happens simultaneously, so I don’t see a separation between the two. I typically make a body of work while reading books in parallel – and I tend to have a number of them on the go.

Sitting down to write has become a ritual. Throughout the PhD I have learnt that I first need to take myself to a space in which I can write. I always start with drawing. While I draw I listen to poets or thinkers or other creative practitioners. After a few hours I can move into writing because I have been in a space where I know I can do what I need to do – where I am in my element. The next day I have to do the same again. Drawing helps me combat procrastination.

Is procrastination about fear?

Not for me. My problem is wanting to do everything at the same time. I read a lot of books simultaneously and sometimes I feel like one big ball of energy, my brain going in all directions. With writing I have learnt that I need to slow down and focus on one thing at a time. It is more linear. It has been useful in helping me crystallise an overall vision for where my work is going, and how it enters into conversation with theory but also with other artists whose work relates to mine. The writing also generates new ideas, even though it has taken me a while. I have struggled a lot with it but now it is all coming together.

Who are the poets and theorists you gravitate towards the most?

The Lebanese-American poet Etel Adnan is someone I feel I need to listen to when I am about to write. There is something in the way she thinks about language, art, philosophy, poetry and their interrelations that resonates with my practice. I am also using Édouard Glissant’s concept of archipelagic thinking, which represents a paradoxical sense of belonging to a specific place while simultaneously feeling a connection to the entire world. Another anchor for my research is what Preciado advocates for: prioritising public ruins over private profits. By exploring history that has been suppressed or forgotten, I have discovered meaning in unexpected places – specifically, in the decaying carpets and the relics and artifacts found in museums, private collections, and online archives.

I am especially interested in authors who challenge dominant narratives: Jack Halberstam, Edward Said, Sara Ahmed and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. And I am also reading poetry by the likes of Joy Harjo and even Edward Said (I found his poetry by chance, at South London Gallery bookshop) and some of the Iranian poets I grew up with such as Forough Farokhzad, Sohrab Sepehri, Hafez and Omar Khayyam. I see no hierarchy among these voices. They all bring different perspectives, from different parts of the world that I feel I need as someone who is thinking and writing in a second language.

I know you get a lot out of working with technicians, not just your supervisors…

My supervisors advise me on the shape of the thesis and they highlight ideas and insights I may have overlooked. Their guidance is incredibly valuable. My relationship with technicians is a little different, less formal. I work with two Surface Lab Design technicians quite closely, Sophie Reynolds and Noor Khazem; they have taught me so much. They offer technical perspectives and expertise I lack and prompt me with questions like ‘what about this’ and ‘what about that?’ They are directly implicated in my research because they help me gain insights into my own practice. I feel lucky because accessing workshops at CSM can be difficult.

There is something about working with technicians, just being with them, that makes things happen spontaneously. It is electric. In the past couple of weeks, they have been teaching me to operate the embroidery machine. I suspect most BA and MA students use the technicians to help them work out solutions or fix errors when the machine stops, which happens a lot. I have often wondered, why doesn’t anyone ask how it actually works? I find it fascinating: working directly with the machine produces spontaneous insights. I have started manipulating the machine, giving it only half the data it needs. I am fascinated by how I can produce very different images from the same input. They are all different but still carry a trace of the original.

What is the PhD bringing to your work as an artist?

A lot of what I am doing now I was already doing previously, but there is a new depth to the enquiry and the practice. It forces me to make ideas more explicit. Where previously I would have been quite happy to leave certain intuitions unarticulated, the PhD makes me draw them out and shape them. It is also encouraging me to articulate my methods: I am exploring carpets and weaving looms as structures, and I also use the idea of weaving to understand how my thesis brings various parts together like threads on a loom.

Have there been any major surprises or stumbling blocks?

My director of studies, who was also my MA tutor, had to leave mid-way through the PhD. That was a difficult transition. But, luckily, I have two new supervisors who are both excellent, so it has worked out brilliantly. They have brought new layers to the PhD, ideas I hadn’t thought of. Over the past year or so, I feel I have found my grounding, my vocabulary. There was a shift that happened quite suddenly when I suddenly found my supporting columns.

What has been the hardest part of the PhD for you?

Juggling the balance between life, work and the PhD has definitely been a learning process, especially in terms of managing my own expectations and accepting that I can only do what is possible at any given moment. It can be quite lonely, even though you meet many interesting people along the way. My second and third years were the most difficult: I felt disconnected somehow – but, luckily, in my fourth year I met another student with whom I felt I could really be in a continuous dialogue, and we have since developed a close friendship.

It is not so easy to find a sense of belonging, or a true ally, is it?

As we are not a cohort where relationships emerge naturally, it takes more of a conscious effort. And work can also get in the way. But there have been highlights too – participating in a workshop series we had at CSM was a wonderful experience because it brought together technicians, academics and PhDs on an equal footing.

Or participating in Documenta 15 with a workshop on languages and translation. I played Iranian spoken word and I wanted to see people’s primal reaction to hearing a language they don’t understand. I find non-English languages beautiful; they make something shift my brain. And very recently, we had our CSM PhD Research in-Progress Showcase, Desire Lines, where we shared our research and practice with one another. I find these moments so important because they create space for insight, reflection and collective thought.