HĀL / حال is a 4.5-hour durational performance by Farvash, created and performed in collaboration with London-based artist and musician Mohammed Rowe. The performance was created in relation to MAGU, an installation and group exhibition situated one floor above at Inkonst. Together, the two works explored the Persian concepts of hāl and Magu, and the possibility of experiencing one through the other.

The work takes its name from the Persian word hāl (حال), a state or condition that can be physical, emotional or spiritual. The intention was not to make a performance about hāl, but to create a space where it could happen. Hāl is different for everyone. The audience could enter, leave and return, finding their own hāl within the performance.

Prior to the start of the performance, Farvash marked out a territory on the floor with large, hand-taped circles of neon-pink tape. A landscape emerges. Farvash moved in a circular route. Their hands were miked, turning tapping into deep, drum-like sounds. Farvash and Rowe connected through rhythm, sound and spoken word.

There was a pile of sand.

I didn't know what I was going to do with it.

Once the performance began, I started pouring, carrying and pushing the sand around the landscape. I continued for hours. Through my body, sound and rhythm resonated into patterns in the sand. Eventually I became exhausted, and I could hear my breathing.

My son was three months old at the time. I began thinking about his first breath and my mother's last breath. I started speaking to her in Farsi, telling her how grateful I was to have experienced both — witnessing a first breath and a last breath. My own breath happening between them.

I connected with my mother. Whether that connection happened, or happened entirely within me, remains unknown.

Five hours passed. I remember the curator tapping me gently, telling me that the audience had been asked to leave. I could stop if I wanted to.

To reach HĀL / حال, the audience first passed through MAGU one floor above, through a Farsi blessing covering its walls. The performance explored the idea of the Magu as someone who can create the conditions for hāl to become a collective experience.