APARASTOO ANOUSHAHPOUR
Ultrablue*
Photo: Ultrablue*, 2025, work in progress. Courtesy of the artist.
project
Ultrablue* is a 25‐minute experimental film conceived for both cinema screenings and gallery installations. The project fuses 16 mm with Hi‐8 and 4 K video, layering chroma‐key compositions, archival fragments, interviews, poetry, and on‐screen text.
Ultrablue* asks how images disappear—and re‐emerge—under regimes of prohibition. Anchored in post‐revolution Iran, the film examines state strategies that erase queer and female presence and the counter‐practices that continually surface in response. Three interconnected chapters move from the surface of printed images to the immaterial networks of solidarity, and finally to the erasure of women even in death, mapping a trajectory from concealment to collective memory.
SUPPORT IN ARTISTIC PRODUCTION - 2025
Ultrablue* asks how images disappear—and re‐emerge—under regimes of prohibition. Anchored in post‐revolution Iran, the film examines state strategies that erase queer and female presence and the counter‐practices that continually surface in response. Three interconnected chapters move from the surface of printed images to the immaterial networks of solidarity, and finally to the erasure of women even in death, mapping a trajectory from concealment to collective memory.
SUPPORT IN ARTISTIC PRODUCTION - 2025
Practice and Biography
Parastoo Anoushahpour is an artist and educator originally from Tehran now based in Toronto working predominantly with film, video and installation. Her moving image practice explores the power embedded in narrative structures and their role in shaping geography and politics. Since 2013, she also works collaboratively with Ryan Ferko and Faraz Anoushahpour. She was an artist in residence at the Mohammad and Mahera Abu Ghazaleh Foundation (Jordan), Tabakalera International Center for Contemporary Art (Spain), Taipei Artist Village (Taiwan), and Banff Center for Arts & Creativity (Canada). Her recent solo and collaborative work has been shown at the ICA (London), Berlinale, MoMA, The Flaherty Film Seminar (New York), Punto de Vista Film Festival (Pamplona), Sharjah Film Platform, Viennale (Vienna), NYFF, TIFF, Images Festival (Toronto), IFF Rotterdam, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Experimenta (Bangalore), and Media City Film Festival (Windsor/Detroit).