A REINTERPRETATION of Elizabeth Castle with banners heralds “new possibilities” for the relationship between heritage and contemporary art, according to Jersey Heritage’s creative commissions producer Aras Amiri.
Before moving to Jersey, Ms Amiri worked as the British Council’s art manager for Iran for more than five years, developing collaborative projects with artists and cultural institutions across the UK in music, theatre, literature, film, architecture and visual arts before being imprisoned in the country for over three years accused of founding and directing an illegal group against the Iranian regime.
She was acquitted by the Iranian supreme court and returned to the UK in 2022.
Jersey Heritage’s castle installation – unveiled last month by artist Katrin Mountain – highlighted the fortress’s history in a series of large-scale banners that will hang at the castle through summer.
But Ms Amiri explained that the project “to make a silent, invisible history present” is just the start of an initiative to explore the impact that art can make on heritage sites generally.
“In the last 40 or 50 years, this link between contemporary art and heritage has become a really interesting area of work – you can see in France and in the UK that there have been some amazing projects and a lot of literature around it.
“What art can do is to bring a different audience to heritage sites; it can interpret the heritage site through a very different lens; it can also help with the artist to have a different profile. It merges the contemporary art and the heritage audience, as well as making heritage alive again through the connection art makes with new audiences,” she explained.
Next month, in a partnership with the Société Jersiaise, composer Charles Mauleverer will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the passage grave at La Hougue Bie with a sound installation.
Ms Amiri explained that, while the arts have been used at Island sites in the past, the intention was now to “do more of it and do it more frequently”.
“I hope that art will become embedded into many of the activities that we do. Everyone in the team is open to that. There are a lot of sites, so there was a lot for me to learn,” she said.
An Iranian art producer, curator and writer, Ms Amiri has worked as an independent writer for art magazines, and as a curator with exhibitions in London such as Recalling the Future: Post-revolutionary Iranian Art, and Breakfast in Tehran: Representation of Women in Contemporary Iranian Art.
Two days after her wedding to James Tyson, whom she met at the British Council, the couple relocated to Jersey where Mr Tyson took up his role as head of programme at ArtHouse Jersey. Ms Amiri was also swift to immerse herself in the Island’s cultural life, helping set up The Moving Arts Collective with artists Esther Rose Parkes Heinrichs and Karen Le Roy Harris.
Work with the collective helped forge links with Jersey Heritage and when the role of creative commissions producer was advertised, it provided the platform from which to explore the impact that art can have in illuminating our heritage. Ms Amiri believes it affords a wider potential for the Island.
“Jersey has so much to offer and there are so many possibilities as far as the part art can play. Jersey can be a cultural hub but it needs investment and government to see the value and the future potential is not visible now.
“But if you invest in it that future would flourish and would benefit everyone in Jersey and create a different identity so that Jersey is loved for itself,” she said.
