A PhD art research conducted by Hoda Siahtiri
-In assosiation with Sint Lucas Antwerpen and The University of Antwerp

Abstract
Singing the Silences is an ongoing artistic PhD research of Hoda Siahtiri. The songs of nomadic women of Bakhtiari, freely express the emotions and opinions of their female creators concerning different aspects of their daily lives.
Through this research, Hoda floats in the fluidity of the songs of Bakhtiari inhabitants of Zagros mountains in west of Iran.
By embodying and transforming the possibilities and the qualities of resistance in the repertoire of Bakhtiari songs against the ordeals of patriarchal social system, Hoda proposes to experiment with forms of embodied sonicity of resistance in performative audiovisual forms.
Engaging in this work, not only let her to incorporate her own personal ancestral relations in Iran through the practice of singing, but also allows her to reconsider her situation as a displaced body in the heart of Europe, in Brussels. What bridges both is an embodied practice of survival in a society in which dominant voices mute and silence fragile narratives and ways of being, sensing and feeling.
Together they push Hoda’s research into poetic approaches of resilience to speak, narrate, voice and sing the silences she inherited.