Salon Gathering
Curated/Hosted by ZAHRAH EHSAN
August 21, 2020
5.00 pm onwards
Zahrah Ehsan, visual artist/painter—and now developing skills as a hair and makeup artist—will host an evening gathering of salon-style conversations at Museum of Impossible Forms, alongside offering free haircuts, one of a variety of services she’s now practicing.
As a non-EU artist without access to many forms of social security, Ehsan has been figuring out ways to support her life and artistic practice. She wishes to share these newly learned skills, and foster frank and generous conversations about learning and unlearning in relation to expectations of living as an artist.
The event welcomes anyone regardless of gender, age, class, ability, and education.
The salon is often framed as a French Enlightenment, mostly female-led conversational tradition, but it also has less examined earlier roots in Arabic literary salons, and revolutionary political gatherings throughout Latin America and the Nordics. Salons flourished as an informal way to fulfil intellectual and educational needs while giving space to voices not permitted to be in political conversations.
The Museum of Impossible Forms provides an intimate and homely space to test out a contemporary iteration of the conversational salon, nestled within the frame of a hair salon. It is a way to begin sharing strategies and knowledges about survival: student residence permits vs working permits; successes and challenges in the labour market; fostering networks and exchanges via alternate currencies; reflecting on feelings of loneliness and burnout; trying to set boundaries between art and life; and voicing approaches to making your work and practice visible (especially through social media) while navigating limitations and biases because of the language(s) you speak.
To enter a salon is also to claim time and space for yourself—to be touched with care, listened to, and treated gently. These qualities will be fostered around those who wish to have their hair cut, and extended to others just hanging out, through mediating and hosting the conversation(s).
Zahrah welcomes you to join and test out this way of being together. Safer Space principles apply and will be read at the beginning of the session. Accessibility needs can be shared via email to museumofimpossibleforms@gmail.com, and we will do our best to accommodate them in dialogue with you.
Museum of Impossible Forms is accessible by lift with thresholds max. 4 cm on the way. The toilet does not meet accessibility criteria for those using a wheelchair—the ground is flat, but space in the toilet is limited. The nearest accessible toilet is located at Kontula metro station.
BYOB if you wish. Some tea and coffee will be provided at the event
Zahrah would like to thank Katie Lenanton for a fruitful exchange of ideas, and for her time while working together in formulating the description text used in this invite.
Museum of Impossible Forms is a cultural space, located in Kontula, Helsinki. It is a contested Space and it represents a contact zone, a space of unlearning, formulating identity constructs, norm-critical consciousness and critical thinking. Impossible Forms are those that erase and facilitate the process of transgressing the boundaries/borders between art, politics, practice, theory, the artist and the spectator. For 2019-2020, Museum of Impossible Forms operates under the curatorial theme of ‘The Atlas of Lost Beliefs (For Insurgents, Citizens and Untitled Bodies)’.
Museum of Impossible Forms is a Safer Space. We follow a Safer Space policy to create a welcoming, inclusive, awesome environment.
Events at the Museum of Impossible Forms are completely free and accessible without prior booking.
Museum of Impossible Forms is accessible by lift with thresholds up to 4cm on the way. The toilet has no thresholds but is not spacious enough to meet accessibility standards. The nearest accessible toilet is located at Kontula metro station.
For directions, please refer to this Map.