About the exhibition

Found in oblivion is an exhibition in praise of lost places and people. It is an attempt to revive those memories which might have been forgotten over time, a contemporary interpretation of historical images by bringing attention to old family photographs of Iranians.

This exhibition consists of four projects:

Distorted memories includes old photographs of children folded in transparent papers with printed the pattern of Persian handwriting “Do you remember?” which is borrowed from the text that had been written at the back of one of the photographs. Using the transparent papers refers to the sheeting papers used in old family albums to protect the photos.

Wanderers series is an attempt to bring life back to abandoned houses, it is a combination of contemporary photos of demolished and abandoned houses and the ghostlike figures of people taken from old family photos that have been printed on transparent papers.

A letter to… is the embossment of texts and letters that were written at the back of photos and postcards on white papers in transparent envelopes that alludes to the concept of emerging and disappearing of memory and history at the same time.

Displacement a series of double layered frames shows people detached from their surrounding environment and places without people. It is an invitation to touch, observe and discover memories and stories of distance and displacement.

About the artist

Melika Forouzan Pour was born in Tehran, Iran in 1986. She graduated in the bachelor of Fine arts and Master of Arts in photography from the University of Tehran, Iran. She took her second Master in Fine Arts from the University of Calgary. Over the years her focus shifted from photography to painting and printmaking. She explores place attachment and memory in her works. Her art pieces has been presented in exhibitions in Iran, Britain and Canada. She has also published some articles in the field of family photography and collective memory in different
Iranian Art Journals. Melika has been living in Calgary since February 2021 and her pronouns are she/her.