There are two kinds of people, 2023
car installation with sound piece, 3”37’
January 27 – February 19, 2023
Location: public parking lot in front of Berlinische Galerie,
Alte Jakobstr. 124–128,10969 Berlin.
There are two kinds of people in this world.
Those who see things and those who don’t.
Those who think and those who don’t.
Those who kill and those who don’t.
Those who drink and those who don’t.
Those who pray and those who don’t.
Those who survive and those who don’t .
Those who change and those who don’t.
Those who belong and those who don’t.
Those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don’t.
Those who live forever and those who don’t.
– Tara Habibzadeh
Tara Habibzadeh’s installation There are two kinds of people (2023) reflects on the multifacetedness of influences on and viewpoints amongst the Iranian people, who are often reduced to stereotypes in Western pop culture and media. Through a collection of specific objects connected to Iranian culture, from pop culture to queer feminist texts, the artists creates a portrait of a fictive car owner torn between different binaries: four books, Tandis-e eshgh’s Statue of Love, basically the Iranian equivalent of the famous romance novelist Danielle Steel; Down Girl: Die Logik der Misogynie by Kate Manne; Frauen in iranischer Wirtschaft by professor, lawyer, and women’s rights activist Mehrangiz Kar; Professing Selves by Canada-based Iranian researcher and professor Afsaneh Najmabadi on gender studies in Iran and the pre-colonial history of trans identities in Iran; a North Face fanny pack; and several cell phone holders attached to the car’s front window.
As part of There are two kinds of people, Habibzadeh created a 3.37-minute sound piece, a collage consisting of snippets from Freed From Desire, the 1997 hit by Italian singer GALA, a song the artist listened to frequently in their childhood, as well as a male voice, repeating: “isto hafte deymahe hezaro chaharsado yet,” Farsi for 27.10.1401, the day the voice was recorded after the islamic calendar. The young man recorded his voice while filming petroleum workers on strike at the Abadan oil refinery in Khouzestan on his cellphone.
Tara Habibzadeh’s car installation There are two kinds of people was created in 2023 for CARPARK and is on view from January 27 to February 19, 2023, on a public parking lot in front of Berlinische Galerie, Alte Jakobstr. 124–128,10969 Berlin.
TARA HABIBZADEH (b. in Tehran) lives and works in Berlin and Tehran. Influenced by cinema, dramaturgy, music videos, documentary films, comedy, and news, and with a background in mathematics and law, their practice can be seen as the evidence of ambiguous visual dialectics. Habibzadeh’s wide variety of works explore themes such as heroism, ideology, survival, gender identity, trans-generational and -historical narratives, first-generation diaspora, war, brainwashing, pain, and propaganda.
