Exhibitions & Public Presentations

• “Behind the Windows” – Photography & Installation Exhibition and Artist talk
  HALLE 6, Munich, Germany | November and December 2025

“In exile and forced migration, one’s identity is often erased, imposed, or entirely rebuilt — I chose the third path.”

With the simplest tools — my phone to capture images and my writing to express what couldn’t be spoken — I began to recreate myself. This collection was born in moments when, in the midst of depression and the struggle to survive, art became my only way to speak to the world. In a place where I was unseen, where I existed as a silent, wandering ghost, art became my voice — a language of suspension, resistance, and the will to redefine myself in a world that had pushed me to its margins and denied me basic human rights.
These photographs are fragments of time — moments that moved and yet stood still. To me, a window has never been just an architectural frame. It has always been a symbol of connection — a boundary between myself and the outside world: sometimes transparent, sometimes opaque.
On the days I walked outside, photographing the windows of strangers’ homes in Turkish cities, it was my way of reaching toward people whose language I could not speak. Each window became a silent conversation, a fragile attempt to touch a world that felt distant and unfamiliar in exile.
On other days, I stayed inside and photographed the world through my own window — and only nature moved: the clouds and the sky, the shifting seasons, the passing light. Everything kept transforming except for me. I remained still, isolated, reduced to an observer. This part of my photos became a visual calendar of waiting — of years suspended in uncertainty, when time both moved forward and refused to pass.

This collection is a narrative of my attempt to connect — with the unknown world outside, and with the nature that kept moving even without me. In contrast, the inside — the house, like the inside of myself — became a space of silence, inner reflection and
self-discovery.

Farnaz Abdoli
2017-2025

• “Living on Waiting Chairs“- Video Installation
  HALLE 6, Munich, Germany | November and December 2025
  

This video installation has a duration of 11 minutes and 40 seconds and is intentionally designed with a slow rhythm. Throughout the video, my body appears as the subject and gradually fades from one position and state into another, never fully settling. This slow transformation reflects how I perceive my years of exile and suspension in Turkey.
When I look back at those years, this is how they manifest for me: a life lived on hard waiting chairs—chairs found in places where waiting is compulsory. Railway stations, bus terminals, airports, offices, administrative buildings, and all the exhausting transitional spaces in between. Chairs designed for short pauses, yet I was forced to remain on them for prolonged periods of time.
Alongside these chairs, suitcases are always present, carrying the bare minimum of life and the fragments I moved with from place to place: my flower pot, my cat, a few books, my notes, and planning pages scattered around the chairs. These objects form a fragile ecosystem of survival.
The video is projected directly onto the objects—the same chairs, suitcases, and belongings arranged in the space exactly as they appear in the video. As a result, the objects remain physically fixed, and only my body moves, appearing almost like a ghost passing through a static environment—neither fully present nor entirely absent.
Within these limitations, I attempt to meet my most basic needs: eating, sleeping, reading, writing, and even practicing yoga and meditation. These small, repetitive actions become strategies of endurance—acts of care performed within a condition of prolonged restriction, waiting, and uncertainty.

• “Heimat, Deine Sterne“- Symposium & Group Exhibition
  Künstlerhaus Gansberg, Bavaria, Germany | September–October 2025
  
  Selected work presented as part of a symposium and group exhibition exploring notions of home, belonging, and displacement through personal and collective constellations of identity

• “From Bandar to Berlin“- Fashion, Textile & Cultural Exhibition and Artist talk
  Aendri Art Space, Munich, Germany | September 2025
  
  Exhibition presenting wearable concepts and textile-based works developed through collaboration with local women from southern Iran. Traditional textiles were redesigned into contemporary forms, accompanied by documentary films and photography reflecting women’s lived experiences and regional identity.