BIRDWATCHER (2010-2025)
In his photo series Birdwatcher, Pasha Rafiy uses the multi-layered meaning of birds to reflect on social conditions. The bird appears both as the observed and the observer - as a mediating figure through which social, historical and ecological questions are hinted at.
As a cultural symbol, the bird stands for freedom and unattainability, but also for power and repression. Rafiy also uses the perspective of and on birds to question ways of seeing: the bird's-eye view refers to a position above the human perspective, which enables a way of perceiving beyond the usual view. Birdwatching, which gives the exhibition its title, requires both precise and patient observation in order to perceive external, typical characteristics, behaviours or traces left behind.
While looking through existing photos, Rafiy found motifs of birds that never refer only to themselves: as silent witnesses to political upheavals, as traces of violent histories, or as symbols of the transition between life and death. Against an ecological backdrop, they become projection surfaces for longing or the fascination with overcoming gravity.
Between transience, appropriation and contradictions, the series condenses a complex picture of the ambivalent relationships between humans and nature, between past and present.
Biography
Pasha Rafiy (*1980 in Tehran) lives and works in Munich and Vienna. He studied journalism at the University of Vienna and has since been working in the field of photography, film and visual storytelling. His work has been exhibited at the Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Les Rencontres d'Arles and the Konschthal Esch, among others. In addition to several solo exhibitions, he has realised documentary film projects such as Europa (2014) and Foreign Affairs (2016) and was nominated for the Trophées Francophones du Cinéma in 2017. His works are in public collections, including those of the MUDAM, the CNA and the City of Dudelange.