My generation -and probably the next ones, even if they do not know themselves- owe a lot to Bita Fayyazi. In the period of Dial Up internet, with no passports, and translated art books that contained nothing more than some biography, anatomy and visual basics, and the university masters who for them art was up to Pop Art, she was an opened door to look in a different way and think and practice art.
It was twenty-five years ago when we first heard about “installation” in her works and her friends at exhibitions held in dilapidated and abandoned houses, and when the ceramic biennials were still full of bowls and seven-colored glazes, her huge installation of the pottery beetles was surprising. Putting the pottery dead dogs on the roads in 1997 and then burying the earthly art, and bringing art to the streets on the pretext of air pollution in those same years, she brought the activism in public space to our minds. Not working in a private space and doing collaborative works and collective ideas with young artists -whom she never called them assistants and students and did not make them a copy of herself- made a dynamic and creative artist, free from usual shackles out of her who has influenced a large number of artists more than what her humility might declare.
As an experimenter and a hard worker, fearless of making mistakes, away from the usual mottos of the time and tricks of attracting or rejecting the market, Bita Fayyazi is constantly dealing with different mediums and materials. She is a credible artist with a great resume and lots of unfinished works in her studio that she would not show them just for the sake of competing with herself and the others, but until they achieve the desired results; she has the story and narrative and mysteries of herself for everything and is still capable of arising our admiration and amazement.
