PublicationNotes #16

The Southwest Asia region, shaped by its complex and tumultuous histories, continues to bear the scars of both past and more recent traumas. These deep-rooted wounds underscore the urgent need for healing — to address not only emotional pain but also the existential crises faced by individuals and communities.

This context emphasizes the crucial work of mohit.art, a transcultural network and platform founded in 2021. Dedicated to contemporary art and cultural practices across Southwest Asia and Europe, mohit.art bridges geographies and fosters collaboration among artists, curators, and cultural practitioners. By challenging exclusionary frameworks and amplifying marginalized voices — especially those of artists who are also women — it provides space for resilience and transformative healing. In a fractured world, mohit.art demonstrates that the arts serve as connective tissue for hope and change.

Our editorial framework for NOTES in 2025 — hope, healing, and joy — reflects these priorities. Art and cultural practices, in this vision, challenge dominant narratives while affirming solidarity, beauty, and possibilities for a shared future.

mohit.art NOTES #16, under the guidance of its guest editor, artist Rana Severi, explores the significance of hope in a world that seems to grow more chaotic each day. The following thought has no doubt crossed many of our minds: When out in the city streets, I often look at people’s faces and wonder — how do they keep the shine in their eyes? Amid economic challenges and the hardships of daily life, where, indeed, do people find the energy to keep going — and even laugh along the way? Grappling with fear and anxiety, thinking about migration, and wrestling with the sense of meaninglessness can make the ground beneath our feet feel shaky. The constant question then becomes: What is there to hold on to?

And then, hope emerges — not as a clear answer or a fixed truth, but through the very act of searching. It arises within uncertainty. It isn’t something solid to grasp on to, but something formed in motion. As we are witnessing today, people continue to find and build ways to keep their hearts alive. Whether through sharing stories, honoring and practicing joy, connecting with one another, or making art, staying hopeful becomes an act of quiet resistance.

Three original artistic contributions created for NOTES #16 offer a closer look at the topic of hope:

In A Cursebreaker for Healing Woes, a collaborative project by the artists Mana Tashakorinia and Rana Severi, we encounter the story of a people upon whom a curse has been cast — a metaphor for the sociopolitical struggles of a nation. A written letter — an earnest plea to lift the curse — appears alongside a video narrated from the point of view of a witch, offering ritualistic instructions for breaking it. The artists, living across borders, attempt to exchange and heal a shared pain. They imagine magic as a form of resistance and restoration, using letters and videos to reclaim agency, confront oppression, and offer hope in the face of uncertainty.

In her photo-essay Building Home: HASPE NP 16, (n)iki shadloo — an English literature scholar and independent researcher — reflects on the deep emotional and linguistic complexities of migration. She explores how language, memory, and identity intertwine within the migrant experience. shadloo describes how becoming an immigrant has turned her into a kind of translator — between not just spoken languages but entire systems of meaning, emotion, and cultural understanding.

In her visual-textual narration Bear with Me: The Process of Creating Art — Hope and Ambiguity, Shahrzad Darafsheh reflects on the uncertain, often nonlinear nature of making art, using her time on Qeshm Island as a meditative backdrop. Drawing from the landscape — including hand-built water wells that wait for rain and palm trees that adapt to harsh conditions — she evokes a quiet, enduring form of hope. It is a hope rooted in repetition, in small gestures, and in the daily acts of care that carry us forward.

With this publication of NOTES #16 on May 31, 2025, mohit.art is thrilled to once again widen the mohit.art NETWORK. The mohit.art NETWORK serves as a unique platform for galleries, project spaces, and cultural institutions in Southwest Asia, and with this issue it extends to include a WHO-IS-WHO in the arts in Palestine, Syria, the Gulf region, and Saudi Arabia. Please also see the mohit.art CALENDAR to stay up to date with forthcoming events in these region.

Art bears the future! Thank you for your time, reading, seeing, and acting! We hope you enjoy this issue.

mohit.art collaborates with Raf Projects e.V. for the publicatin of NOTES.
Managing editor : Helia Darabi.