We talk to Farnaz Gholami about life on the Graduate Diploma Fine Art at Chelsea, including the challenges of putting on the degree show and how memory has shaped her work.
Where are you from?
Iran
Describe your experience at Chelsea in 3 words:
Challenging – Eye-Opening – Constructive
Please tell us about your work for the final show:
My work for the final show was an installation of 2 shaped canvases and 2 lights on a wall. It was called ‘shading memories’. My practice deals with the memory from domestic interior space of childhood which can have a powerful role in our identities today. In this installation by demonstrating a reflection of a shadow in an abstract way, and also installation of electric lights with big gap on a white wall, I was trying to deal with how we only remember the fragments of a memory and the rest of the memory is hidden or erased like an empty space between those fragments.
What was your greatest challenge in working towards the degree show?
The limited time that we had in our course which was right after our off-site show. And curatorial decision as it was a group show.
What do you see yourself doing after you graduate, what are your career ambitions?
I will continue my education studying Masters in Fine Art at UCL (Slade) and would like to continue my career as an active studio-based artist.
What have you enjoyed most about studying at Chelsea?
The access to all the lectures and workshops and an extra-ordinary resource of books and catalogues in the library.
What have you most enjoyed about the area around Chelsea? Any tips?
Chelsea’s location is amazing. Being next to Tate Britain is such a privilege and it is just a bus or even a walk to any gallery in the center of London. Trying to see as much as a person can in London is also very important for our practice.
What would you say to someone who is thinking about doing your course? Any advice?
Try to make most of their time at Chelsea by attending as many lectures as they can, even if the title of the lecture seems irrelevant to their practice they might learn something exciting. Use the library and try to make art as much as they can. Graduate Diploma is a short and intensive course that if a student put a good energy to it he/she will make a big achievement in the end.
Check out more of Farnaz’s work
Check out Farnaz’s degree show work at our degrees show website
Find out more about the Graduate Diploma Fine Art