Forgive My Intrusion: A Review of Helia Chitsazan’s Forces of Change and Memory

By MARQUEZ WOODS October 28, 2024

In viewing Helia Chitsazan’s Forces of Change and Memory, I found myself in a swirl of mystery. I entered blank, with almost no background knowledge - and did my best as someone who craves context to ignore the text boxes. Relinquishing habitual cerebral analysis, I set sail on an open-hearted inquisition. And, for better or for worse, I found my own answers. 

Fou Gallery is a bright, airy space that foreshadows the exhibition's themes via post-construction partition walls and industrial bricks and pipes. Materials beyond those listed in the exhibition catalog conjoin history with modernity. Fourteen works are intentionally distributed across the moderately sized space, finding placements that halt the viewer, push them back on their heels, and draw them in. This curatorial push and pull allows for a cognitive breath between each piece.

Upon approaching the body of work, I felt an uneasiness akin to the woozy state just before a three-day fever. I had been affected by a purgatorial virus that lodges one’s spirit somewhere between life and death, sanity and delirium, past and future. 

Fermented memories.  

Dysmorphic reflections.

Herbs and soot and oxygenated blood.

There’s an occultist breath across this intergenerational material. 

If The Wolf and the Sheep can be used as an introduction to the body of the work, the viewer is clearly voyeuristic. Whether you are a fellow Wolf or a witness to the horror that will befall you is unclear. Perhaps it is Chitsazan's mischievous grin that leads you to your own consumption. Or perhaps this is a manifestation of some other, greater maleficent force. One thing is clear, we are being led on a journey, and wherever the destination, there would be a tortured and perhaps sadistic madness.

Unlike Dante, the body of work doesn’t feel like some heroic quest into hell. Oddly, it doesn’t feel like a physical space either. It was a twisted Hades of (y)our own making, living just behind the stained wood surfaces. 

In various works, the feeling of voyeurism, of intrusion, continues. The subjects call out in a shocking fashion that either you don’t belong here, or this is exactly what you deserve. In The Concreted, a woman who’s been sentenced to vivisepulture gives a bone-chilling smile as you become her new concrete casket mate. She indeed does not pity your fate.    

The motif of haunted faces seen in the above paintings is reminiscent of poltergeists to a flash camera - a twisted collision of identity, memory, and ancient presence in modernity. The pale faces break the fourth wall and, like a bright light in the night, are burned like phosphenes into your vision. In The Mirrored, we see a tortured spirit coagulate in discomfort by the viewer's eyes.  It’s hard to tell whether these subjects are surprised to be sought after or wild-eyed like feral animals by your sudden attention.

Albeit unsettling, approaching the portraits sees them blossom into intentional markings. The density of texture in the oil pastels are rich and add touches of fluorescence to the earthy palette. Chitsazan’s masterful control of color breathes light into the dark rich hues found at a distance.

My perspective on the body of work detoured from a spiritual journey when I viewed Halfway In and Out. Here we can see the glow of a mobile device light up the face of the subject. This is where the undertones of technology’s influence on mental health and modernity became evident. It could be that this well-known source of overstimulation and false self-representation is the key to the twisted darkness felt across the exhibit. Even here, the subject turns away from the device to sharply face you, again projecting a scopophilic point of view.

Yet another turn in my journey of understanding began with There Is Nothing There. Here we see a subject transforming into an iteration of the pale-faced motif. The totality of these schizophrenic visions are revealed to be an internal hallucination. Or a twisted memory that has lost its course with reality. Though this piece shows an air of panic, Fully Settled In sees the protagonist come to terms with the surreality of her brutal setting. Of her mind. Whether via dysmorphia, or war, or by the very hand of God.  

Perhaps it is here where one finds freedom and autonomy. If you are the devil in your own personal hell, you are not an intruder. You are not even a guest. You are the host and thus, you are home. The thunderous chants and drums make you dance instead of cry.  The powdered faces are merely reflections of your own luminosity. And the billowing flames and silhouetted figures are cast from the cake that celebrates your long- awaited arrival. WM