About

Exploring notions of home and memory, Hootan melds personal and political histories that often centre on the moment of 1979 when his family left Iran following the Islamic revolution. Working predominately in sculpture and photography, his work distils echoes of the past into the now with richness and ache.

Biographically loaded objects with poetic potencies, such as family photographs and cassette tapes, are at times repetitively stacked and frozen in stillness in custom-made cabinets. Plaster is frequently used as a strong yet fragile material to both coat and cast, associated with building homes and healing broken bones. Farsi text often features – an Iranian refrain that breaks down linear time. Threading through Heydari’s practice is futility, compulsion and repetition: hallmarks of the act of making and the act of remembering.  

Heydari (Born 1970 in Tehran) completed his Master of Fine Arts by Research at the Victorian College of Arts, at the University of Melbourne in 2024.

 Hootan is represented by Futures Gallery in Naarm