Images Festival 2024 | ultrablue* (cancelled)

June 12, 2024

Parastoo Anoushahpour’s exhibition ultrablue* was cancelled by the Ace Hotel on May 29, 2024. The citation to this title reads:

*The ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people unfolds through images and videos on our screens, and the dominant media invents terminologies to devalue the lives lost in struggle. I, as an artist predominantly working with moving images, find myself unable to move beyond the reality and the image of unjustified violence. Death is the image that surrounds us here, in our comfort, at a safe distance far away. I stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their ongoing struggle for liberation. Freedom will remain an illusion until it is for everyone.

–Parastoo Anoushahpour

Parastoo’s residency at the Ace Hotel was part of our 2024 festival and part of Ace Hotel’s global Artist in Residence (AiR) program. ultrablue* (Parastoo Anoushahpour, 2024. Ink, paper, wheatpaste, replicas of modular paper used for arranging flower bouquets for the dead purchased on 28 March 2024 from Behesht Zahra cemetery, Tehran, Iran) is a site-specific work that was made over the course of Parastoo’s residency in April, which included the above text, written from her own perspective. This text was not permitted to exhibit at the Ace Hotel by upper management, citing risks to safety and security. Parastoo’s artwork had already been produced, approved, and was not in violation of her contract nor the hotel’s code of conduct.

The censorship of Parastoo’s work came as somewhat of a surprise to Images. We began our relationship with the Ace Hotel as an official AiR partner with the understanding that “Ace Hotel’s Artist in Residence program is the embodiment of our [Ace Hotel’s] deep conviction that artists deliver us a critical lens through which to understand the world and ourselves.”** By the time we were preparing to install Parastoo’s exhibition, Images had already presented two programs at the Ace featuring Palestinian artists and narratives: Notes for a Guestbook, a solo exhibition of Nour Bishouty’s work (who was the Artist in Residence at the time), and For all things spoken and unwritten, a screening of films by Nour Bishouty, Alaa Abu Asad, Ulufer Çelik, Serene Husni, and Razan AlSalah, followed by a discussion between Nour and Serene.

At the same time, we acknowledge that the censorship of Parastoo’s words and work has occurred in a context of increased censorship across our sector, and beyond, around the expression of support for the people of Palestine. At this point, we have all witnessed numerous well-documented instances of program cancellations, as well as artists, organizations and arts workers being dismissed, forced to take leaves, silenced, and encouraged to self-censor for this reason.

Images has had the privilege of including Palestine-focused programming in our festival over the course of our 37-year history. Our current team is striving to ensure that Images’ platform is one where artists, filmmakers, and community members, especially those who are marginalized, can be advocated for without fear of extraction or censorship. Needless to say, we are disheartened by the Ace’s abrupt change in position. As a result of the Ace’s cancellation of Parastoo’s exhibition, we have concluded our partnership with them.

We hold dear the trust of those who continue to share their work with us and our audiences, and we have worked with Parastoo through this process. Images will continue working to foreground the voices of artists, filmmakers, and arts workers in a time when voices are being suppressed, censored and erased.

The original exhibition text remains below.

ultrablue*

Parastoo Anoushahpour, 2024.

Ink, paper, wheatpaste, replicas of modular paper used for arranging flower bouquets for the dead purchased on 28 March 2024 from Behesht Zahra cemetery, Tehran, Iran.

During her residency, beginning April 02, 2024 at Ace Hotel, Parastoo developed the installation ultrablue* , the first iteration of an ongoing moving image project with the same title. ultrablue* explores the grave as a political locus for imagination and resistance, a material remnant of an ending that defies closure forming a significant part of a people’s collective consciousness.

This exhibition is presented as part of a yearlong partnership between Ace Hotel and Images Festival. Four artists have been invited to participate in quarterly, month-long residencies at the hotel followed by an exhibition of their work. The residency took place under the theme of (g)host, extending the 2023 festival’s central inquiry and foregrounding moving images to contend with ideas at the intersection of archives, spirit, care, and hospitality.

–Parastoo Anoushahpour

Images Festival operates on land stolen from the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, the Huron-Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Tkáron:to is currently home to diverse Indigenous and Métis peoples as well as people who settle on this land. As part of Treaty 13 and the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Covenant, we acknowledge that we all eat from the same bowl and spoon, and must take only what we need, ensuring resources are available for all.

As art workers, artists, and curators, we see the process of untangling ourselves from settler complicity as internal, structural, and ongoing. It is not something to be taken lightly. The inclusion of Indigenous artists and curators into our program is just the first step of necessary and deeper change. Extending from our organizational accountability work, we strive to not only undo forms of complicity, but also actively create an environment and infrastructure that can support Indigenous peoples who work with us.

Images expresses our solidarity with Indigenous people on Turtle Island and globally. We are committed to continuing to learn, critique, and challenge the settler colonial structures we are complicit in.