Kids' APT7 : In review

43 KIDS’ APT7 AT QAGOMA PARASTOU FOROUHAR PERSIAN FOR KIDS 2012 For Kids’ APT7, Iranian-born artist Parastou Forouhar created a multimedia project to complement her ongoing print series, Persian for Beginners . Players were able to manipulate Farsi script and animal silhouettes using a custom-designed multimedia program to create their own zoomorphic images. Once completed, participants watched their Farsi creature come to life through animation and shared their work with family and friends via email and social media. An animation — an idyllic scene of zoomorphic images in a wilderness, which was also created from Farsi script — screened in the gallery space. Families interacting with Parastou Forouhar’s multimedia project Persian for kids 2012 / Gift of the artist through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Being able to work with Parastou Forouhar to transform her work into the multimedia interactive Persian for kids was a unique collaboration for the artist and for us. Kids could learn about Parastou’s artistic practice by creating their own animals from Farsi script and then watch them animate. Parastou had worked as a painter on her Persian for Beginners series for many years, and could not contain her laughter and amazement when she saw her familiar creatures come to life with the help of animation. Aidan Robertson, Senior Multimedia and Web Designer Persian for Beginners is a series of calligraphic drawings that I started in 1997 when I was a member of a German-based artist collective. I increasingly became the ‘Iranian’ in the group . . . a challenge accompanied by feelings of both affiliation and strangeness. I have tried to distil this ambiguity in my work and use it as a source of creativity. Looking at these images, the first thing you notice is the figure of an animal. Closer inspection reveals that it has been created from script: a single repeated word (the name of the animal) written in Farsi, the Persian language. This series follows the tradition of zoomorphic calligraphy, which established itself relatively late in Islamic art, when the taboos outlawing religious iconography had lost some of their power. Parastou Forouhar