THE ECHO OF PROTEST IS DISTANT TO THE PROTEST | Auto Italia
Nazanin Noori’s THE ECHO OF PROTEST IS DISTANT TO THE PROTEST, currently on view at Auto Italia, asks us an unsettling question: who is saying sorry, and to whom?
In the main gallery, the sculptural work THE PARTY OF GOD / WELL DID WE LIVE features the Farsi word معذرت (“I’m sorry”) cut in bright yellow acrylic, suspended against a garish green plastic curtain. The red carpet underfoot adds another layer of theatricality. The colours match the flag of the “party of god”, Hezbollah: a state-sponsored organisation.
The sculpture’s a response to the 2022-23 uprisings in Iran, the Berlin-based artist’s home country. The nationwide protests were sparked by the death in custody of Jina Amini, a young woman who fell foul of the state’s morality police. Jina and the protesters are owed an apology.
But the apology is hollow and imaginary. The glossy acrylic lettering, the plastic curtain, and the saturated hues feel simultaneously kitschy and menacing, a kind of cheap stage set for power’s empty gestures. It stands in ironic contrast to the scene just the other side of the gallery window, a peaceful residential street in a posh part of Hackney. We could hardly feel more removed from the fray.
The sculpture is intentionally absurd — an apology fashioned from tacky materials that mirror the gaudy rhetoric of authoritarian regimes. Noori’s “sorry” is speculative, impossible, and despairing. It prompts the viewer to confront the difference between words and genuine accountability.
This point is emphasised by the sound installation in the gallery’s red lit back room. IF THERE IS GOD NO ONE WILL BE DAMNED / A HOLLOW SONG SUSPENDED weaves orchestral and electronic textures with vocals, including excerpts from T. S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men. The poem’s lines evoke the same spiritual inertia as the sculpture:
We are the hollow men /
We are the stuffed men /
Leaning together /
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when /
We whisper together /
Are quiet and meaningless…
Noori seems to ask what remains when language fails, when voices are silenced or emptied of consequence. When words like “sorry” don’t lead to action, they become meaningless — sorry isn’t sorry.
We’re not off the hook either. When we follow life-and-death protests from afar, and don’t take any meaningful action, we hear only echoes. Hollow sounds.
THE ECHO OF PROTEST IS DISTANT TO THE PROTEST is at Auto Italia, London. 10 April - 22 June 2025