Mamali Shafahi, Tehran and Paris

Heirloom Fountain, Velvet Dream is a 6x10x10 meter installation by Mamali Shafahi. It continues the artist’s Judgment Night : Daddy kills people series last exhibited in Tehran (March 2022). The work maintains the aesthetic language of Shafahi’s recent practice—deeply rooted in the myths and iconography of ancient Iran—while introducing another layer that connects distant history to present-day concerns. The installation incorporates the same fountain/pool ensemble seen in the Tehran show, now repositioned at the center of a wide platform blanketed with sand. Overhead, a dome-like canopy, upheld by multiple columns, stretches above the pool. This dome is coated in Klein-blue flocked epoxy, a technique Shafahi has employed extensively in his recent pieces. The fountain itself features a female body as its base, topped by multiple creature heads. These heads are drawn from paintings by Shafahi’s father, Reza Shafahi, and depict four hybrid human-animal beings facing outward from the center. Suspended at the four cardinal points are colorful bodies dangling from the ceiling. From each torso, a head protrudes. Surrounding the platform and within the pool, additional creature heads are scattered, their entrails exposed.

Shafahi draws from Iranian-Islamic architectural motifs—muqarnas (vaulted ornamentation), gonbad (dome), taaqi (arch), and columned halls—evoking both grandeur and decay. Yet it remains unclear whether this structure is a mosque, mausoleum, carnival, or ruin. This uncertainty echoes throughout Phantasmagoria, producing a tension between sacred space and theatrical spectacle.

The figures within this world are hybrid—part animal, part human—yet neither entirely one nor the other. From their midsections, unfamiliar beings seem to emerge. Viewers might ask whether these characters are in the throes of giving birth or confronting death. The hanging bodies might suggest execution by hanging—or, perhaps, if the space is a shrine, they could serve as totems for ancestors or emissaries from the afterlife. Maybe they are symbols of the eternal cycle of life and death. Shafahi blurs the lines between what is real and what is imagined. This ambiguity permeates the entire structure: the choice of colors, the materials, and especially the eerie blue glow cast by the fountain, all feel synthetic, queer, and unstable.

The pool/fountain ensemble alludes to death rituals—not only Iranian, but cross-cultural. The water inside the pool resembles blood: not quite red, but a vibrant, fluorescent pink. This unusual hue conjures many layers of historical memory—from the past (such as wartime cemeteries in Iran during the Iran-Iraq conflict of the 1980s that featured pools of blood-red water) to more recent events (like the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests). The circulation of this blood-water, from fountain to pool and back again, suggests a never-ending cycle—as if every mouth is bleeding in silence. Under the velvety coating that envelops the bodies and heads, a persistent, slow violence seeps through. In this piece, Shafahi addresses the way violence repeats itself through time—shape-shifting, never entirely disappearing. Though the artist has faced threats and hostility after openly identifying as queer, his exploration of violence transcends personal biography. In Daddy Sperm, he began by probing the family as the smallest unit of social control. Judgement Day: Daddy Kills People expanded that inquiry to include patriarchy and systemic domination. With Phantasmagoria, Shafahi extends his investigation further, focusing on how violence repeats across generations and geographies.

The cycle of harm is not only thematic—it is embodied in the installation itself, where changing light marks the passage of day into night and night into day.

On the sand, within the water, and across the hanging figures, Shafahi applies fluorescent pigments. These pigments respond to UV lighting fixtures, which change as daylight fades and the space is enveloped in darkness. This lighting cycle reinforces the work’s core themes: repetition, recurrence, transformation. Whether viewed under sunlight or UV glow, the atmosphere shifts—casting the same forms in new emotional registers.