Yalda Bidshahri: Bāqi means “remaining” or “enduring” in Farsi. Throughout this project, I’ve been thinking about cycles of life, death and renewal, and what it means to continue through periods of hardship and loss. What does the idea of remaining or enduring mean to you, and how did it become the starting point for this performance?
Sara Masinaei: I think the initial idea emerged after reading your curatorial note, and specially your accompanying texts. It led me to revisit my own beliefs, as well as some broader questions around the cycles of life. I had also just come out of a severe depressive episode brought on by the wars across my homeland, my husband’s homeland, our host country, and the wider region, which had inevitably forced me to confront what it actually means to carry on. Beyond the very real fears and anxieties around safety, certainty, and loss, I was compelled to think about survival and continuation, not just physically, but more so emotionally, spiritually, and mentally.
The word Bāqi came to me almost intuitively as the title for the research and writing I was undertaking for this performance. Later, when exploring its meaning, etymology, and linguistic and cultural applications, both historically and in contemporary contexts, I understood how closely it aligned with what remaining or enduring means to me, and why I eventually kept the title. Bāqi carries spiritual significance in Islamic theology and speaks to the impermanence of everything in the world, particularly in the context of life, death, and grief, while also pointing towards the continuity of existence. In a more contemporary context, it is a meditation on loss and a reminder of mortality, as well as a reflection on faith and legacy, where existence extends beyond what we can hold on to.
So, I suppose what Bāqi, remaining and enduring, means to me is the possibility of continuation through transformation. It does not deny loss or hardship, but rather holds space for the understanding that disappearance is not the only truth, and that what remains or endures may do so in forms we could never have anticipated. Perhaps this is made possible, in part, by the gestures, hopes and memories that we carry, and through which we continue to hold one another, even in the face of what might otherwise feel like definitive endings.
YB: The performance draws on bodily practices associated with women in mourning, birth, celebration and other ritual contexts, particularly traditions from the Gulf region. I’m interested in how gestures can carry memories and histories, sometimes without the need for words. What drew you to these embodied traditions, and what do you think the body can carry or communicate that language cannot?
SM: There is something fascinating to me about the idea of embodied memory. Scientifically, we know that the body is involved in how we learn, remember, and respond to experiences: movements become embedded through repetition, and physical sensations become associated with particular emotions, occasions or memories. Gestures are also learned and transmitted culturally, through participation, observation, and ritual. In this sense, the body becomes a vessel through which knowledge and experience can pass between people and across generations often without the need for words, exactly as you said.
The body can communicate through presence, rhythm, and touch, in ways that language sometimes fails to; language can describe an experience, but the body can allow us to feel something of it without needing to articulate it. There is also an ambiguity in bodily expression that I find important, where a gesture does not necessarily need to be understood in one particular way, sometimes holding contradictory emotions at once.
For Baqi, I particularly focused on gestures and traditions from the region. Having lived here for most of my life, I’ve witnessed, participated, researched and become increasingly interested in how these bodily practices carry our histories and collective experiences, even sometimes without us being fully conscious of where they originate or what they hold. I drew on the oscillation between what is remembered and what is felt, informed by collective histories yet continuing beyond their original context, somewhere between the personal and the communal, retaining traces of what came before and allowing for new interpretations to emerge.
Perhaps, it is worth mentioning that I had initially included a recording of a poem I had written specifically for the performance, however I eventually decided to remove it exactly because I felt the body could communicate what I was finding difficult to articulate in words. I became more interested in allowing physical presence, rhythm and repetition to hold that space, rather than explaining it through language.
YB: One of the ideas I’ve been returning to throughout this project is that perhaps we aren’t simply moving in circles, but along an upward spiral, revisiting experiences of loss, grief and renewal from different places. Repetition is also central to Bāqi, both in its movements and in the ritual practices that inform it. Can returning to a gesture or ritual allow something new to emerge?
SM: I think repetition, whether through rituals, somatic movement, or mental and physical practices, allows us to reach or return to something without necessarily arriving at the same place. A gesture or ritual may be repeated, but the body, the circumstances, and the meaning we bring to it are never quite the same. Each return carries the traces, knowledge, memories and wisdom of what has happened in between, and this is where the possibility of transformation and emergence lies.
In Bāqi, this same idea carries through. The repetition is not about reenacting an experience or trying to restore it; rather, It is about acknowledging the emotions that accompany loss, grief and renewal, and allowing something else to take shape through them. So, I think in our “upward spiral”, we revisit certain experiences, gestures, and emotions, but each time we encounter them from a slightly different position, because something has shifted, however subtly, and each encounter opens up the possibility of experiencing them differently. In this sense, continuation is not a return to what was, but an ongoing process of becoming something else.
YB: You’ve brought together fragments of songs and music associated with rituals of birth, mourning, celebration and rebirth within the performance. How did you approach bringing them together, and what happens to their meanings when they encounter one another and your movements?
SM: I approached the audio as a kind of collection of fragments, each carrying its own memory, context, and emotional weight. I was interested in bringing together sounds that are associated with very different moments in life, from birth and mourning to celebration and renewal, and allowing them to exist alongside one another without necessarily following a linear narrative.
When these fragments encounter each other, their meanings begin to shift. A sound that originally belonged to a particular ritual or occasion can take on another resonance when placed beside something entirely different. I think the same happens through the movements. The body responds to these sounds, but it also creates its own rhythm and interpretation, sometimes following them, sometimes moving against them. In bringing these fragments together, I wanted to create a space where different experiences of life, loss, and renewal could coexist, and perhaps reveal unexpected connections between them.
YB: I’m interested in the ways cultural memory is carried forward through the body, particularly through practices passed between women across generations. In Bāqi, these inherited gestures are abstracted and transformed rather than reproduced literally. What does it mean to you to carry these traditions into the present through your own body?
SM: There is something quite profound about the idea that the body can carry memories that are not necessarily its own, but have been passed down through generations. I became particularly interested in the ways women hold and transmit these memories through gestures, sounds, rituals, and forms of physical expression. Women have historically been the carriers of knowledge and many rituals surrounding moments of transition such as birth, mourning, and celebration, often transmitting these practices through generations and through the body rather than written records. The gestures hold forms of knowledge and collective memory that may have otherwise remained undocumented, and our bodies become sites through which these histories and cultures are preserved, adapted, and continued.
For me, bringing these traditions into the present through my own body is about engaging with something that existed before me, while allowing it to be experienced through my own memories, associations, and physical presence. I don't see it as an act of preservation or reproduction, but rather as a way of entering into a relationship with these traditions and considering what they might mean when abstracted, displaced and experienced in a different time and context. The body becomes a point of connection between past and present, holding traces of inherited gestures and collective memory, while also allowing them to be questioned, reinterpreted, and experienced anew.
YB: In Bāqi, soil becomes an integral part of the performance. We see you gathering it, holding it, moving through it and allowing it to fall from your hands. Your body leaves traces in the earth, just as the earth leaves traces on your body. What drew you to soil as a material, and how does this physical relationship between body and earth inform your thinking?
SM: I was drawn to soil partly because of its multiple associations with birth, growth, decay, nourishment, and mortality. I was also conscious of the cultural, poetic, and spiritual associations that soil carries, particularly in Iranian and Arab traditions, where it is connected to creation, humility, purification, and the idea of returning to the earth. I find it interesting that these meanings coexist, and these dualities resonated with the ideas I was exploring in Bāqi.
What also interests me is the physical relationship that develops between the body and the material. There is an exchange taking place through touch, weight, resistance, and movement, and neither remains entirely unchanged through this encounter; there is something quite humbling about this relationship. It becomes a way of thinking about what we leave behind, what we absorb, and how things continue to exist through processes of change and renewal. In this way, soil is a reminder of our physicality and vulnerability, but also our connection to something far more powerful and beyond ourselves.
YB: The title suggests that something remains even as life moves through cycles. Throughout this project, I’ve been asking what survives periods of destruction and what we carry forward as we approach renewal. What do you hope remains through this performance?
SM: When I think about what survives periods of destruction, I think of the intangible: memories, kindness, love, a renewed way of relating to one another, or the ability to imagine something beyond what has been lost.
I suppose what I hope remains through this performance, or what people leave with, is a heightened awareness of their own emotional presence and capacity, and perhaps a moment of stillness in which to consider what it means to be here, to experience, to remember, and to be connected to others. There is something quite moving about the fact that we can experience the same moment differently, while still sharing it. I hope Bāqi creates a space for that kind of encounter, where each person can bring their own memories, associations and interpretations without feeling that there is a particular meaning they are expected to take away. Perhaps what remains is that personal connection, and whatever it might quietly set in motion afterwards.
This conversation is part of عزیزم، دنیا گلستون میشه یک روز / ‘My dear, one day the world will bloom into a garden’, conceived by Yalda Bidshahri for the ROSVÂ Summer 2026 Guest Curator Residency
