In ‘Songs to Earth, Songs to Seeds’ Sepideh Rahaa portrays the poetic but often invisible and inaccessible process of rice cultivation in the paddy lands of Mazandaran, Northern Iran. The process – which takes almost a year – is an intergenerational tradition, with knowledge being passed down for nearly a century through the artist’s family.

Rahaa expands this familial history, where women play an integral role, to contemporary lives, where strong visual narratives are intertwined with local songs sung by Iranian women. The songs contain stories of their daily struggles in Mazani (an indigenous language from Northern Iran) and are passed from grandmothers to mothers and daughters to be sung during the cultivation and harvest seasons. This poetic narrative connects cultures, languages, geographies, politics and people, whilst questioning power structures and positioning women’s labour as an everyday resistance. Rahaa lays bare the often invisible and inaccessible process of rice cultivation and invites us to consider how this complex and layered farming of a global food staple is intertwined with contemporary cycles of consumption. The work highlights food politics – particularly how Iranian farmers are forced by sanctions to use toxic chemical fertilisers – and speaks to social and environmental injustice.

During the harvest season, it is customary to collect and put together a handful of rice plant clusters and hang it on the wall. Often taking the form of a doll, it is believed to symbolise prosperity and abundance both for the household and for the paddy land. Historically, farmers would use an ox for land preparation, and, as a respectful gesture, would name the rice doll after the animal as ‘Verza Mashte’, literally meaning ‘a fist of rice’ – the product of the animal’s work.  Some would keep the doll and feed it to the ox at the beginning of the cultivation season in Spring, others would put the doll in water until green shoots appeared, then use it in their new year (Nowruz) table setting in March. The rice used in this doll is Tarom Hashemi which is the grain being cultivated in the video work.

‘Songs to Earth, Songs to Seeds’ was commissioned by Liverpool Biennial.

Courtesy of the artist and Liverpool Biennial. Images by Stuart Whipps.