Blurring the Boundaries: Stories on a Revolution
April 2025, HelsinkiBlurring the Boundaries is a multimedia, interactive installation and performance that transforms personal narrative into a choose-your-own-adventure experience. Developed as the final project for a Master’s thesis in Live Art and Performance Studies, in collaboration with Mad House Helsinki and Vapaan Taiteen Tila, it explores the blurred lines between art, activism, and personal desire.
The work invites participants to step into a fictional protest, guided by a Game Master who simulates the power structures of an authoritarian system while holding space for the hope of freedom. Each participant must decide how to protest, balancing instinct, strategy, and reflection on what truly matters in the pursuit of liberation.
Rooted in experiences from the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran, the project draws connections between the socio-political landscapes of Iran and Finland—questioning how activism is perceived, how it is judged, and how individual choices can shape a collective movement.
Concept and Design and Performing by: Paria Mohajerani
Video Design by: Homa Shokri
Sound Design: Logane Rime
Producer: Theatre Academy Helsinki
Collaborators: Mad House Helsinki, Vapaan Taiteen Tila
Paria’s interview with Mad House Helsinki can be read here
Photos: Elis Hannikainen
A Simple Path to Justice
October 2024 Vantaa“A Simple Path to Justice” is a performance staged in an abandoned store within the Isomyyri shopping mall in Vantaa, presented as part of the One-day Stand Performance Event organized by The Other Side performance platform.
The work emerges from an ongoing research and collaboration between Paria Mohajerani and Xiaole Wang, begun in October 2023, focusing on themes of surveillance, public gaze, migration, tourism, and cultural differences in concepts of safety, privacy, and assumption.
The performance questions social values around consumption and money by reversing their hierarchies. It begins with a theatrical act in which a “master” and a “student” introduce a book of rules for living in a society where values are redefined. The piece then unfolds into a participatory workshop, inviting the audience to rehearse alternative behaviors and practices within the shopping mall based on the rules of the book.
Co-created by: Paria Mohajerani & Xiaole Wang
Support and facilitated by: The Other Side Performance Platform
Photos: Aman Askarizad
Never Been in a Riot
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The Act of Remembering
May 2024 Helsinki
The Act of Remembering is a participatory art project rooted in the artist’s personal memories of childhood. The work was first presented at Malmitalo Helsinki as part of the “Neighbourhood” festival. In this interactive piece, the audience is invited to join in a journey of remembrance by tracing letters in Farsi. The project celebrates diversity and encourages participants to engage with languages beyond Finnish or English, fostering a deeper appreciation of cultural and linguistic variety.
The Act of Remembering was also included in the group exhibition at MUU Gallery, organized by Tero Nauha, Freja Bäckman and Andy Best. Titled Never Been in a Riot, the exhibition featured wearable or moveable artworks created from “soft materials,” with an emphasis on their connections to fashion, public protests, demonstrations, riots, and carnivals. The materials from Mohajerani’s work were also worn during the 1st of May parade in Helsinki, extending the piece into the public sphere.
The Act of Remembering by: Paria Mohajerani
Participating Artists in the exhibition: Shaghayegh Ansari, Manon Buard, Daniela Kasperer, Sandra Marins, Paria Mohajerani, Alina Pajula, Victoire Poinas, Vappu Raappana, George Rallis, Sara Rantanen, Duncan Robertson, Fati Sarsaniia, Sumin Shin, Maija Suominen, Alena Tereshko, Xiaole Wang, Niko Wearden, Matilda Wheatley.
photos: Eeva Anundi
Stories we Tell Ourselves
November 2023,
Orońsko
Stories We Tell Ourselves is an installation combining sound, photography, and sculpture, first exhibited at the Orońsko Sculpture Center in Poland as part of the exhibition Wealth, Price and Value.
Created in collaboration between Paria Mohajerani and Mikołaj Tomczak, the work invited audiences to gather around a symbolic fire, to view photographs composed by Paria and captured by Mikołaj. These images were inspired by historical photographs from the Sculpture Center’s archive and re-staged with new subjects, creating a dialogue between past and present.
While looking at the photographs, visitors listened to a polyphonic soundtrack of personal stories spoken in many different languages. The stories were collected through a workshop process, in which participants were asked to recall and share a memory in their native language. By layering these narratives, the work sought to reimagine collective memory, highlighting diversity, inclusion, and the multiplicity of language as a space of belonging.
Co-curated by: Paria Mohajerani and Mikołaj Tomczak
Witness to a Dream
October 2021, TehranWitness to a Dream took place on Zoom with an invited audience, focusing on public dance in an authoritarian context, where visibility of certain bodies—especially female—is highly restricted. The audience participates as anonymous decision-makers in an imaginary city that comes to life only when everyone is present online.
The performance is a free adaptation inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, drawing on the play’s themes of love, desire, and magical transformation to explore rebellion against restrictive social rules and the quest for liberation. Audience members direct two dancers acting as rebels on the streets of Tehran, attempting to reclaim public space for movements and bodies that are often excluded and rendered invisible.
Decisions are made through pre-designed steps, replicating democratic voting systems and highlighting the ethical responsibility of guiding vulnerable bodies under real risk. The performance unfolds in five stages, culminating in a decision about whether the dancers can safely perform at height—questioning the audience’s thirst for liberation from the safety of private screens while two real bodies navigate danger in public space.
Concept and Design: Paria Mohajerani
Dramaturge: Azade Ganjeh
Performers: Elmira Ashofteh, Ali Kargari
Camera: Shaghayegh Ansari, Lavan Labafi
Technical Support: Pouria Firoozi
Searching for a Better Past
April 2021, Tehran
Presented during the Re-connect Festival in 2021, Searching for a Better Past used Instagram Live to sustain performance art amid Covid-19 restrictions and social oppression. Audience members directed Paria Mohajerani to enact postures inspired by archival images of the March 8, 1979 women’s protests against the compulsory Hijab law, a largely forgotten movement. Each posture was captured with a Polaroid camera, creating a tangible record of this reconstructed memory.
The work interrogates the ethics of witnessing and the tension between public and private space, as a single female body navigates visibility, risk, and resistance—while responding to real-world conditions on the streets of Tehran.
Concept and Design: Paria Mohajerani
Live Camera: Pouria Firoozi
Documentation: Homa Shokri
Wearing
April 2020, TehranWearing is an online live performance first presented on Instagram during the Covid-19 pandemic. The piece engages the audience in a playful yet critical one-to-one encounter, addressing themes of the male gaze, the ethics and responsibilities of participation, and the politics of the female body under censorship and authority.
The performance begins with the artist emerging from the shower, wrapped in a towel, and inviting the audience to guide her positioning within the camera frame. She declares that she will follow their instructions without control over the outcome, leaving it to the audience to decide whether her body will be revealed to others on the livestream. As the performance unfolds, the camera shifts to different spots whenever she dresses in another garment; each position is named after a male figure commonly present in a woman’s life, underscoring how these roles shape visibility and power.
Taking place in Tehran, inside the artist’s bedroom, the work emphasizes the tension between public and private space. A floor-to-ceiling mirror doubled the gaze, intensifying the exposure of intimacy to a collective audience. By using Instagram Live, Wearing questioned whether digital platforms could act as liberated spaces for the female body, free from imposed coverings and control, while also revealing the fragility of such spaces under surveillance and censorship.
Concept and Design: Paria Mohajerani
Sound Designer: Pouria Firoozi
Due to the sensitivity of the context in Iran, the performance was neither recorded nor archived—the poster remains the only trace of the event. Wearing later became a key work discussed in the artist’s interview when applying to the Live Art and Performance Studies program at the Theatre Academy, Helsinki.
Project “Home”
March 2020, TehranDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, when social media became an even more central space for connection and visibility, we began developing a series of conceptual video works exploring the notions of home and private space. Beds, the first in this series, examines the intimate relationship between the human body and the objects it most closely interacts with.
Concept and Videography: Paria Mohajerani
Performer: Homa Shokri