Installation, photography and film
‘If society does not provide a home, is there a place in the landscape for the displaced?’
I fled. Not for the first time.
But now I feel it.
I recently moved to Sexbierum.
A small village in Friesland.
Everyone asks why.
I’m still looking for an answer.
’Every day I climb the Sedyk. I climb straight up. I look at the sea. I look at the sky. Infinite variations in colour and texture. I see how almost all borders disappear. How the horizon remains as the only border. Between heaven and earth.
One day I saw the sun and the moon at the same time. The sun sank slowly into the sea and the moon rose behind the fields. A majestic and grandiose piece of theatre that takes place every day but which had always escaped me.
The sun, the moon, the dike, the Wadden Sea and the sky. Ebb and flow. The fields. A beauty more wondrous and true than any man-made system.’
When I Saw the Sun and the Moon at the Same Time
When I Saw the Sun and the Moon at the Same Time is a 24-hour journey along the Sedyk in Friesland in 24 minutes. Tina Farifteh developed the installation specially for BredaPhoto. It is part of Tina in Sexbierum, a transmedia project about displacement, detachment and the simultaneous desire for a home and inability to feel at home in a society that continuously rejects you.
On view at the BredaPhoto Festival from September 13 to November 3 2024 at Backer+Rueb Hall in Breda.
About the artist
Tina Farifteh (1982) is a photographer and filmmaker who came to the Netherlands from Tehran at the age of thirteen. She graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in 2021 with her project The Flood, which won several prizes, including the Royal Academy Bachelor Award. Her documentary Kitten or Refugee? was awarded the first prize in the storytelling category at the Zilveren Camera awards in 2024. Farifteh moved to Sexbierum because she could no longer find affordable housing in Amsterdam. Her friends returned to their hometowns: Voorburg, Sint-Michielsgestel and Krimpen aan de Lek but she could not go back to Tehran. ‘If your way back home is cut off, you might as well go to a random place with a nice name and a beautiful view.’
Credits
‘When I Saw the Sun and the Moon at the Same Time’
Concept & direction: Tina Farifteh
Creative producer: Eefje Blankevoort
Camera: Tina Farifteh
Editing: Francesco Indaco
Music, sound design and mix: Eddy Steeneken
Color grading: Eefje Blankevoort
Light: Boris Acket
Scenography: Boris Acket & Tina Farifteh
Engineering: Merijn Versnel
Gaffer: Jur Oster
Producer: Laura Verduijn
Assistant producer: Natascha Erfanipour
Intern: Isa Werleman
Editor: Harminke Medendorp
Curator BredaPhoto: Astrid Hulsmann
Art director BredaPhoto: Jan Schaerlackens
Technical producer: Johan de Bruijn
Head of production: Dennis Oomen
Technical support: Ignacio Daniels
Graphic design: House TMM
Data handling: Waste Eisma
Translations: Behnam Taebi, Gerard Forde & Mark Baker
Music ‘Freedom’ by Homayoun Shajarian & Seventh Soul and ‘Tehran’ by Roody
Made possible by Forhanna Foundation, Mondriaan Fonds, Stichting Oog op de Natuur en Amarte Fonds.