Fear Performance: The Myth of Sisyphus
2013
Single channel video projection of documented performance work. 9 minutes 10 seconds. Collection of the Artist.
FEAR - Polystyrene, Nylon, Plywood. 3000x400x800mm. Collection of the Artist.
In this documented performance, Asdollah-Zadeh reinterprets the Greek myth of Sisyphus whose punishment for deceit was to ceaselessly roll an enormous boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down. Standing in for Sisyphus, the artist drags a sled with a sculpture spelling out the word ‘fear’ up a steep sand dune near Te Henga. As the sculpture physically weighs him down, the uphill haul also emphasis the idea that fear is a burden of contemporary society.
Asdollah-Zadeh’s work relates to the existentialist philosopher Albert Camus’ influential text The Myth of Sisyphus where he interprets the myth as an allegory for the absurdity of the human condition.
In the context of this exhibition, the sculpture and documented performance is a reminder of the pervasiveness of human struggle and how present the experience of fear is in so many people’s lives.
Accompanying text for the Pale Blue Dot written by curator Lisa Beauchamp as a part of the ‘The Shouting Valley’ exhibition, 2019.
The following photographic stills are taken from single channel video of the documented performance work.
To view the documented performance, visit Circuit.org.nz.
https://www.circuit.org.nz/film/fear-performance-the-myth-of-sisyphus
“The Gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labour.” - Albert Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus. London: Hamish Hamilton Ltd, 1955. pp 96
"In the twentieth century, literature, often supplemented by mythology, was used as a looking glass through which to examine philosophical subjects. Literature grounds experiences in particular contexts with wide-reaching appeal and relevance, meanwhile the agency of myth is its suggestive, rather than didactic, demonstration of human experience; as well as its functioning in the realm of emotional encounter. This attribute is contained in Shahriar Asdollah-Zadeh’s installation Fear, Faith and Persian Pop, comprising four artworks: two films – Fear performance: The myth of Sisyphus (a documented performance) and Persepolis: What lays in the abyss it has created (a looped short film) – and two sculptures Faith and Fear.
The Greek myth regarding Sisyphus has emerged in various settings as a subject throughout history; for instance Titian’s Sisyphus (c.1548-1549) and Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones’s Sisyphus (c.1870). As punishment for deceit, Sisyphus was compelled to infinitely roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down. For the fringe existentialist Albert Camus (1913-1960), Sisyphus’s hopeless quandary was an allegory for the fundamental absurdity of the human condition. Camus proposed that peace for the individual was paradoxically possible via an embrace of one’s own ridiculous plight. Through merging literature with myth, Camus offered a treatise for how life ought to be lived, as he saw it, in the twentieth century. When applied to contemporary culture, Sisyphus’s predicament has correlations to the despondency of a life filled with menial labour and lack of overriding purpose.
For Asdollah-Zadeh, the symbol of Sisyphus is pertinent and topical. Sisyphus provides the backbone for the artist’s exploration of human struggle, political turbulence and migration in Fear, Faith and Persian Pop . Asdollah-Zadeh has picked up and adapted the legacy of Camus to comment on current social issues, arising through economic crisis, rising unemployment and low wages. The artist stands in for Sisyphus in Fear Performance: The Myth of Sisyphus, his predicament set against a backdrop of black sand dunes near Te Henga. The precise location of the dunes in the frame is unclear as they are detached from the site’s surrounding lush Waitakere ranges and dramatic coastline. Instead of pushing a rock, the artist’s Sisyphus drags a sled on which sits a sculpture of the word ‘fear’ made of wood and polystyrene, accentuating the idea that fear is the burden of the modern world, carried in the wake of human discord, debasing emotion."
Excerpt taken from the essay by Zara Sigglekow. Published by Papakura Art Gallery for the exhibition FEAR, FAITH AND PERSIAN POP, 2013. Curated by Tracey Williams.