Mohammad Gorjestani’s roots lie at the intersection of art and activism. “I’m from Iran—my family and I fled a war. We came to the US on asylum,” he shared at the opening of 1-800-Happy-Birthday, an exhibition at WORTHLESSSTUDIOS honoring Black and brown lives lost to police violence, (on view through January 16th). “My mom was an organizer during the revolution in 1979, and my dad ran the art department at Tyran University at that time. We came to the US and I grew up in a section-eight, immigrant, Black and brown melting pot.”
After moving from Cupertino to the Bay area, he was compelled to explore the 2009 killing of Oscar Grant through the eyes of Oscar’s mother Wanda Johnson. In 2013 he went to a birthday memorial for Oscar, curious about the space between the headlines and the lived experiences of those the voracious news cycle leaves behind. “The headlines move on, and people are still there,” he noticed. They embarked on a short film centering Wanda called “Happy Birthday Oscar Grant”, released in 2015. The work evolved into a series of films including “Happy Birthday Mario Woods” in 2016 and “Happy Birthday Philado Castile” in 2017, also following their mothers. “I realized that what was on the news wasn’t consistent with what I was hearing in the community with families in their living rooms,” he says.
In 2019, Mohammad built on his close relationship with Jeff Adachi, who worked as a Public Defender in San Francisco to formalize a partnership between the Public Defender’s Office and Even/Odd, Mohammad’s creative studio. It was the first city-sanctioned, mayor-approved partnership of its kind in San Francisco. “Spending time in the office, having access to case files, seeing the daily work that they do, I realized that just making the films wasn’t enough,” he says.
1-800-Happy-Birthday started in 2020 as an online voicemail project, giving participants the opportunity to leave birthday messages saved to a digital database for individuals who’d been killed by police. Unsure how the project would play out, he was energized by the powerful voicemails that began to pour in. In addition to calls from childhood friends of Mario Woods, Former Black Panther Chairwoman Elaine Brown left a message. There was a call from Fred Hampton Jr, the son of Black Panther deputy chairman Fred Hampton Sr. who was also killed by law enforcement. “For the next few weeks, Mario’s mom just called me and was like, ‘I’m listening to these every day.’”
As the project grew, Mohammad searched for ways to continue evolving his method for storytelling. “I thought it was important to create space that reimagines and expands the continuum of how we emotionally interact with this epidemic, and imagines alternative realities that could exist.” He began meeting with WORTHLESSSTUDIOS founder Neil Hamamoto to investigate possibilities, when seredipitously, New York City began phasing out its public phone booths. He’d already been eyeing phone booths as a tool for bringing the online project to life, and this felt like confirmation.
The first booth started as a pop-up installation at Nada New York, adorned with faux grass, flowers, candles, balloons, and the faces of twelve “celebrants”: Oscar Grant, Mario Woods, Philado Castile, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Dujan Armstrong, Stephon Clark, Fred Cox, Xzavier Hill, Donovon Lynch, Sean Monterrosa and Tony Robinson. When the phone rings, the observer can pick up to hear messages that have been archived over the course of the project.
This fall, that vision expanded into 12 booths for each individual, installed in a circle at WORTHLESSSTUDIO’s 8,000 sq foot warehouse in Bushwick. The exhibition—built in collaboration with curator Klaudia Ofwona Draber—was designed to mirror a real urban community complete with a public park, a brownstone with a stoop, and a bodega with refreshments, prayer candles, birthday cards and flowers you can purchase as offerings to pay tribute. They commissioned artist Kenya Lawton to paint a mural featuring the celebrants that stretches across an entire wall of the warehouse.
Mohammad and Klaudia worked closely with the celebrant’s families. Together they traveled across the country and were welcomed into these families’ homes. “We’ve been texting with them every day. They shared photographs, clothes, backpacks, shoes, trophies, jerseys, graduation caps, books, jewelry, just things they loved,” she says. Many of these objects are on view in the “living room” area of the exhibition, designed to include photo albums, a high school diploma, a television set playing home movies and other objects meant to deepen the immersive experience.
“When I was making the films, I would always start the day in the living room, and then when we would finish shooting, we’d end up in the living room. For me when I thought about the project in my psyche, the living room was a very important place,” says Mohammad.
“Trauma is very complex and there are different levels and dimensions to it,” Klaudia says. “One is a body response. It’s a very visceral, somatic response, so this is designed in a way where you use your body to interact with the exhibition.” The team hopes this immersion will inspire a tangible impact, and have addressed that themselves by setting up family funds. The exhibition’s proceeds will be equally distributed to causes chosen by each family. “Raising awareness is a big part of this exhibition,” Klaudia continues. “But it’s also about taking that a step further.”
Credits
Images courtesy of WORTHLESSSTUDIOS