Text by David Campany
Digital Exhibtion, Foam Museum
The young people who had not grown old were no longer present, and a man in his 60s was carrying them. The violence of the images was intolerable, so I inverted them to negatives to make them showable. At the same time as the photographs were inverted, the young men in the images were ageing due to their greying hair. Young people who grew old earlier than they should have. Faces that, if they were alive, would resemble my inverted images today and the man in Burnett’s photo, with the only difference being their breath still encased in their chests. Thin and injured bodies were resting on the floor of a hospital in the darkness of the night, as black as their eyes and covered in blood. A group of unknown people whose identities are unknown to me. They leave me alone between the puzzle of photography and the reconstruction of history. The taunts that I can never answer, and I become the toy of their cold smile.
On Divar, Iran’s second-hand marketplace, more than nine thousand of these thrones are listed for sale in Tehran alone. They multiply like unwanted memories, each one posted with the same tired promise: almost new, barely used, must go.
The irony is clear. People may still dream of kings, but they no longer dream of sitting like one. The royal sofa isn’t made for rest. It’s made to be endured. A piece of furniture designed more for show than for comfort and even the show has lost its shine.
What remains is a bulky relic, too large for small apartments, too gaudy for modern taste, and too stiff for everyday life.
The royal sofa is not a comfortable sofa.