Sara Madandar is an Iranian multi-disciplinary artist based in New Orleans. She received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin and her BA in painting from the Azad University of Art and Architecture in Tehran. Through a range of media such as painting, video, installation, and performance—Madandar explores migration and the human experience of living in between cultures.

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Being a SHE resident artist has been very beneficial to me during this pandemic, motivating me to work and stay on my deadlines. Not knowing whether I will even be able to have any shows in 2020 had made it hard to maintain my focus and discipline. Yet the residency has given me an opportunity to step back, refocus, think, write, and read, all in order to develop my ideas. In doing so, I have been inspired to revisit an old project, and give it new life in New Orleans.

The project is titled “The Sidewalk,” and it consists of hours-long videos of different sidewalks in different cities in which I have lived. The first film was made in Tehran, Iran, from a French café on Enghelab (Revolution) Avenue: an important street in Tehran and the historic center of the capital’s book trade. Iran’s premier university, The University of Tehran, is also on this street. The street offers the chance to see different people with different bodies and clothes and from different socioeconomic classes all together in the same public space. The angle of the video looks down to the sidewalk, with the camera playing the role of observer.

Video still from “Sidewalk #1”, Enghelab Avenue, Tehran Iran, 2013

The second film was made in Austin, Texas, from a restaurant on 6th street, a busy center of the city’s nightlife, and I am now making a third video, shot from inside a bookstore in New Orleans’ Frenchmen Street.

Video still from “Sidewalk #2”, 6th street, Austin, TX, 2014

Video stills from “Sidewalk #3”, Frenchman St, New Orleans, Louisiana 2020

My videos are intended to record the rhythms of daily life while also discovering the patterns lived by people in the city. In the video series, I exhibit the diversity of people’s lived experience in the city: some go quickly about their daily business without noticing much, while others stay, working on the streets, selling their wares or playing music.

The video consists of three layers. The first layer is indoor; the second layer is the sidewalk, and the last layer is the street. We can see how people’s speeds change drastically across each layer. Inside the café and bookstore, they linger socializing and having coffee. On the sidewalk, they go and pass from left and right at a quick pace. While the videos in Austin and Tehran had only one long sequence, the video in New Orleans will reflect the new reality we are living in. It will have two sequences: one during the height of the pandemic, with the shops and bars closed, and another sequence shot after their reopening. We do not know when the pandemic will end, but we know Frenchmen street will once again see dancers, musicians, and happy, mischievous revelers.

Installation: The first video has been previously installed in two exhibitions. One installation was on a large wall at Co-Lab Projects (Austin, TX), with a life-sized projection that acted as a living a mural on the street. The other installation was indoor at the Asian American Resource Center (Austin, TX), where the video acted as a window to outside.

Installation of “Sidewalk #1” on Co-Lab Project’s wall, 2014

While those projections were of Tehran’s streets in Austin, this project is now evolving to become a connection between many places and cultures. To do so, I will be installing it in different cities, where the video will be projecting the life of another far away city. Now that I am creating the video of Frenchmen street, my next step is to project the street life of New Orleans onto the streets of Tehran, where I hope to create my next installation.