این نیز بگذرد (This Too Shall Pass)
‘ این نیز بگذرد (This Too Shall Pass)’ consists of three large works that all revolve around screenshots – printed in large format – of the online roleplaying game ‘World of Warcraft’, which at first glance seem unreadable. Slowly but surely, the works reveal the true story of Yashar Maghsoudi, who fled Iran at the age of thirteen.
The images show Yashar, as the WoW character Blood Elf Paladin ‘Nighetboy’, travelling with a group of players across all virtual borders of the world before finally reaching the heart of the capital of the enemy nation. He had mastered one of the game’s toughest levels, but didn’t fully realise the true impact of this until two years later. When persecuted by the religious police in Iran, he was able to escape by cashing in on his WoW character. His participation in a virtual conflict had made it possible for Yashar to cross the very real borders of Iran, in the tangible world, to eventually make it to Sweden.
This series is an attempt to address the desperate situation of migrants in Europe and, at the same time, to disentangle the problems of representing the theme within photography. Coupled with the image, an audio recording explores Yashar’s story to this day: Yashar’s application for asylum has so far been rejected six times.