Lilian Nejatpour

The Very Best of Internal Migration (2020)

Text reading: THE VERY BEST OF INTERNAL MIGRATION / The warning parts of yourself / Returning home with a strong sense of departure / Whenever I’d sit down to write you / I’d watch five naked programs of earth-polluted bodies / All dried from the rain, taxed to regime / Come round for a dead bird / She speaks a repressed English / A stinging conversation breathes down a globalised chest / All this mangled material inside a messy stranger, filled with jewels and novels / She laid down and died like a lick / Tina’s body in a café / First-time-fruit, gently waxed / A delicacy in decay / Moving-to-an-abrasive-rhythm / Like-a-sullen-sculpture-dancing-to-melodic-pain(t) / A libidinal holding room / With white offerings / Sailing the walls at-sour-speed / Wounded by a sovereign nature / An-upper-boy / With a childish elegance / Voice-like-a-string-instrument / Whispers

Text reading: “Let’s finish our unfolding” / Spread and eject / The viscous attitudes of the right / [[Ejaculating oil]] / . .. “I placed tissues in your pockets to give you bigger hips” / “You’re part of the night now” / [Holding onto someone’s sleeve] / Feeling undecided and ancient / I craved my own loneliness / A rigid-intimacy / Faithfully cruel / Like static wine / A black carpeted spirit / Fused with poetry / Hair like debris / “You can communicate with dead people through radios on the Bakerloo line” / L E A R N T O R E M I X T H E L O S S O F L I F E / A frequency of trans(itions)missions-------. On the right, a dark classical painting of a pregnant woman in a bright red-and-black striped dress in a dark ornate room. Red and black text digitally imposed on top reads 'R E V E N G E B A R O Q U E'

Text reading: YOU HAVE A REQUEST FROM LAVENDER… Raised in April The flower in my pants She’s a pen Pain on the brush Got that walk-out energy I wanted to poke her shoelaces Like a tender fabric “I’m your baby, not your body” Instead, downloaded the climax And-from-a-bridal-distance observed/ in/ hostile/ celebration/ and in/ chronic song / Will you play later?. On the right is a dark classical painting of a sinister-looking, bare-chested white woman, Sappho, with her head, belly and legs draped in a black shroud. She is standing on rocks over the dark, tempestuous sea.

Text reading: [The third intellectual Enters a cashmere room] Poets in exile Broken people with broken people Holding a handbag of sentences The heavy water weight of words Punctured in the linear “I ripped the seat off the car and thought about exhibiting some paintings on the parcel shelf” Bathed by her voice And blonde veins I followed the 20 laps that echoed 3 hairs and some air In the bosom of my belly I inherited visions Of corp objects I was desperate to drop off them off in Courted essays (Viewed for an about an hour)

Text reading "“I miss seeing your screen body” “I don’t feel it much downstairs”, then a small painting rendered in greyscale - a classical still life of flowers. Then more text reading: A tender Sunday Body of a hell The assertion of objects from left to right An operative s(t)inging Into the broken window of my mouth __ Writing balm Shadow pen Pagan rent The post-heard Mind, Body, Breast, Tender The summer of sexualities

A classical painting of the aftermath of a sword duel in a sparse winter forest in the snow. In the foreground is a slumped man, stabbed, dressed in white as a pagliacco. He is dying, held up by three other men; on the right another man walks away with another man in a harlequin costume. Text digitally imposed over the image reads 'Bodies-that-resemble-breath / EMILY'S EMAIL'

Text reading: 'The slow machine with electronic colours Death and writing The perfect fire escape Household children Smelling difficult Like brown leeches Dangerous designers! My strong narcotic bones Held the underpass of my soul In a chemical haze_ I could smell YOU under my nails “You said the doors were closed” “I’m not quite the flushed human with soft veins”.'. On the right is a classical Japanese woodblock print of a woman in a gown at her toilette. A small cat rolls on the bottom of her gown.

Text reading: LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS / Fig 1: Unknown. Praskobia Kovelyova. 1803. Painting. From: Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_in_art#/media/File:Praskovia_Kovalyova_by_Argunov.jpeg. (Accessed: 10/07/20). / Fig 2: Charles Mengin, Auguste. Sappho. 1877. Painting. From: Art UK, https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/sappho-205579. / Fig 3: Marseus van Schrieck, Otto. Forest Floor with Blue Morning Glories and Toad. 1660. Painting. From: NY Books, https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/11/15/marseus-in-the-land-of-snakes/. (Accessed: 18/11/20). / Fig 4: Gérôme, Jean-Léon. The Duel After the Masquerade. 1857. Painting. From: Artsy, https://www.artsy.net/artwork/jean-leon-gerome-the-duel-after-themasquerade. (Accessed: 15/05/20). / Fig 5: Utamaro, Kitagawa. A Woman and a Cat. 1793. Woodblock Print. From: Met Museum, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/53653. (Accessed: 20/06/20).

About this work

Combining Lilian Nejatpour’s lucid dream practice with aphorisms and autofiction, the image-text interacts with paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries, which informs new dialogues with European painting and the museum space. With themes relating to temporality, estrangement and reproduction, the text addresses the labours that are involved in artistic production, gestation and dreams.

lilian-nejatpour.com

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