XPS foam board, clay, sand, straw, wood glue, black MDF, 125 × 195 × 37.5 cm each.

INFO
Who am I to you? is a triptych of large-scale sculptural reliefs consisting of the works Four Girls in Front of the Carpet, Girl & Boy in Front of the Cabinet, and Three Women Standing on a Mattress. Each work shares the same dimensions, technique, and materials but is based on a different source image from Narges Mohammadi’s family archive.
The series is grounded in anonymous photographs that depict staged portraits of people in domestic settings, whose exact identities remain unknown. The images suggest ceremonial occasions, yet the context is uncertain. Mohammadi enlarged the photographs to life size, translated their tonal contrasts into negative reliefs cut into XPS foam board, and coated the surfaces with loam, a mixture of clay, sand, straw, and glue. The loam both conceals and reveals, emphasising the ambiguity of memory and the distance between personal history and collective imagination.
By transforming archival photographs into tactile reliefs, the series stages a confrontation with memory that is both intimate and estranged. The monumental scale enables viewers to relate physically to the figures while the uncertainty of identity persists. The works highlight how photographs construct appearances that may not align with lived realities, where moments of prosperity or celebration are posed against conditions of scarcity.
Who am I to you? moves in a space between photography, sculpture, and painting. It shimmers between mediums and meanings, reflecting the tension between image and reality, presence and absence, and the fragile line between documentation and imagination.