Researcher: Haleh Vedadi, March (2017), MDes student (Concordia)

Project Scope: Veil | Tent is a research-creation project that takes a performative approach to explore the veil beyond the controversial definitions and interpretations which have been ascribed to it, thereby to investigate the borders between inside and outside, men and women, inferior and superior, human and non-human.

The veil negotiates privacy and interiority as a visible, personal frontier. At a larger yet still intimate scale, shaped by both geographic and cultural forces, traditional Iranian residential architecture is also characterized by interiority and introverted spatiality as foundational principles.

Veil | Tent seeks to reconceptualize the veil as a ‘microcosmic dwelling place’ which projects an extension of privacy into the public realm.

As part of this research-creation performance, a bio-textile (Kombucha leather) acts as a material metaphor of the veil, and constitutes a multisensory environment that mutably reconstructs, as part of the overarching installation, the boundaries between spaces and bodies, and, indeed, the barriers between performer and spectator. In this way, the bio-textile reveals compelling aspects of its own material agency, by imaginatively positioning the body, the veil, and representations of Iranian residential architecture in mutual dynamic interaction.

Slideshow photos and cover photo for this page from:
“Of the world, Dust remains” — an interdisciplinary stage work

Director: Roozbeh Tabandeh
Stage designer: Haleh Vedadi
Photography: Hamid Yazdanpanah
Iran, Shiraz Jan 10, 2019