Pari Banu

The artist and performer Pari Banu understands her art as an exploration of identity in constant metamorphosis. She works primarily through the body and collage, using archival imagery—both historical and personal—as well as material drawn from art history, cinema, and the traditions of her native country, Azerbaijan.

I’ve always been intrigued by what it means to be a man or a woman. Isn’t it possible, simply, to move beyond this duality?

In her most recent works, she reflects on the historical construction of the female body through self-portraits as a trans woman, while also exploring the contradictions and feelings of loneliness, isolation, desire, and the search for safety drawn from her own biography.

She has taken part in several exhibitions and programmes, including:

I Might Be Staring at Infinity (or the Backs of My Eyelids) at ARTIM Project Space, organised by YARAT Contemporary Art Space in Baku (Azerbaijan), 2020.
Queer x Azerbaijan – My Body, My Identity, My Heritage, organised by Nafas LGBTI Azerbaijan Alliance, in Baku (Azerbaijan), 2021.
Queer Chronicles as part of Queering Common Space, organised by POLIGONAL Office for Urban Communication, in Berlin (Germany), 2022.
Queer Runaways, organised by Not Human Collective in Aachen (Germany) and by YUGEN Collective Art in Tbilisi (Georgia), 2023.

In recent years, many members of the LGBTIQ+ community have been forced to flee Azerbaijan, a country where rejecting normative male or female gender roles can lead to repression and social exclusion.

After years of scorn and humiliation—particularly from her own family—Pari Banu made the decision to leave her country, living in Georgia, Turkey and Russia before ultimately applying for political asylum in Spain, a process she is currently undergoing.

Mourning for Narcissus

In this piece, Pari Banu invites the audience to spy on their own reflection, evoking the strangeness of the encounter between the one who looks and the one who is looked at:

I would be a beautiful nymph on a mountain, where travellers passing through the forest might hear my cries. They would spy on me as I bathe in a stream, under the heat of the midday sun. I would reject all romantic advances and fall in love with my own reflection in a mirror—as a memory of him—pleasuring myself to death.

A piece by Pari Banu Asgar (@an_wallflower)
Sound design: Pari Banu
Set design: Carlos Gallardo (@carlos_gallardo_hernandez) and Sergio Escalona
Costume design: Pari Banu and Carlos Gallardo
Photography: Gloria Solsona (@gloriasolsona)

Produced by the CCCB – Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona and NO CALLAREM.
Duelo por Narciso is a performance developed and produced within the framework of the Barcelona Artists at Risk programme, a project co-organised by @nocallarem, @artistsatrisk, and @cccb_barcelona.

With the support of @culturagob, @dibacat, and @igualtatcat.
In collaboration with Festival Opening Frontiers, @lacibascg, @espaiperlapauscg, and @santakoigers.

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