While the Bombs Fall: An Artist from Tehran Speaks the Language of Collage

This was our time. 

This was our moment. 

We had plans.

In these works, I place photographs of war-damaged streets alongside fragments of my own memories in Tehran, my childhood images, familiar corners, ordinary days. The streets in the news and the streets of my life begin to overlap. The result is neither documentary nor fiction, but a collision of historical time and personal time. 

Reading Hannah Arendt, I was drawn to her analysis of how violence becomes normalized when it is absorbed into routine. Arendt distinguishes power from violence; violence appears where power has failed, and when it becomes cyclical, it empties public life of meaning. What remains is administration, survival, repetition. In such conditions, individuals risk becoming spectators of their own time. 

My collages respond to this condition. By inserting intimate images into war photographs, I interrupt the authority of the news image. The monumental scale of conflict meets the fragility of personal memory. A childhood corner appears inside a bombed street. 

I am currently in Tehran. I build these collages using war photographs and images from my own archive , memories from childhood until now, embedded into the city’s skyline. By inserting personal fragments into scenes of destruction, I reclaim scale. The news image becomes intimate. History becomes inhabited. 

These works are not about spectacle. 

They are about remaining present. 

This was our time. And we were here. 

We are people who lose our lives, our time, our youth, our normal life to wars between ideologies. Hope for peace all around the world, and for a just chance to simply live on our planet.

Rana Heidarzade 

Rana (B. 1999 – Tehran, Iran) is a multidisciplinary visual artist who mixes several different mediums like photography, mechanics, and video art in her artworks. Her artworks are about her personal life and her lived experiences. She said, “All of my artworks show my mental states at different times. She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran with a degree in sculpture. She has been sculpting for about five years at her studio. Rana works with different materials like cloth, mirror, papermache, fiberglass, etc. Her sculptures and installations aim to examine the audience with the space. 

• Website: www.ranaheidarzade.com 

• Instagram: @rana.heidarzade 

• Email: ranahzh@gmail.com