I know these cities.

I have walked through them.
Inside dreams or in reality
Cities which no longer exist and will never be.

You don't know these cities, even if they look familiar to you.

I have returned from a journey and I describe them to you, but the more I Say, the less you know them.

Hamed Sahihi, November 2017

Dastan is pleased to announce “Invisible Cities”, a presentation by Hamed Sahihi at Electric Room. The show will be open to public view from December 1 to 6, 2017. The presentation consists of 20 pencil drawings on paper.

The title of the series is inspired by Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” (Le città invisibili, Giulio Einaudi, 1972). In the novel, Marco Polo sits in conversation with Kublai Khan describing cities. While it seems that Marco Polo is describing different cities, one learns gradually that he is in fact describing one city, Venice.

In Hamed Sahihi’s “Invisible Cities” (2016 - 2017), the artist has drawn “places” he has seen in his dreams or his life. Irrelevant to the viewers’ reality, these locations are navigated by the artist in the map of his dreams.