Q&A With Parham Ghalamdar 

The filmmaker behind THE SIGHT IS A WOUND talks to us about his film and creating in the midst of global turmoil

In just 6 minutes and 49 seconds of film, Iranian painter and former graffiti artist, Parham Ghalamdar, tackles a question that has been on the minds of many. How can we continue to create images and make art in the face of an ongoing genocide? Ghalamdar chooses destruction in THE SIGHT IS A WOUND, turning over 50 of his archival paintings into dust and ash to answer this question. As this image of disintegration plays out, a disembodied, AI-generated voice whispers Ghalamdar’s poetic essay to us: “This is the first genocide fully live streamed by its perpetrators,” it says. Despite the flames, this articulation is not a roaring outcry or a rebellion, it is a quiet, haunting reflection on the modern horrors we are witnessing. The film is both an acknowledgment of failure and a promise of change. Ghalamdar speaks to Sludge Mag about his thoughts and process behind THE SIGHT IS A WOUND. 

Can you walk us through the creative process of developing and creating THE SIGHT IS A WOUND? 

The first thing is that it touches on something extremely difficult. Not because people avoid it, but because it’s hard to find the right metaphors to even begin thinking about it. I can’t pinpoint when the film began. It was something I’d been digesting for years. I’d been sensing this enormous, unspoken force in the art world trying to preserve painting as white, Western, and self-referential. But after October 7th, everything changed. It became clear we’d crossed into a different reality. One in which anything I painted would be fucking irrelevant. No image I could make would carry the philosophical or moral weight of what was already coming out of Gaza. So I understood that the painting had failed before it even began. The only honest act left was to confess to that failure. And strangely, that was a good moment for me. It took time to articulate what was happening, but once I did, the work happened fast. The idea crystallised in this accelerated, almost manic burst, and the whole thing was made in a week.

THE SIGHT IS A WOUND, makes the statement that image making is impossible in the face of a genocide because no image is more important than the ones currently coming from Gaza, do you believe this idea stretches across all forms of creation e.g, writing, composing? Where does it end?     

The painter frames. There’s an intrinsic violence to that - a built-in bias. You’re deciding what gets seen and what gets left out. You impose a boundary where there was none. In the face of genocide, that gesture becomes unbearable. This isn’t about painting versus poetry versus sound. It’s about orientation. Are you making toward the crisis, or are you making to escape it? Most creation today is escapology since it’s careerist, aesthetic, and ambient. But I’m interested in the confession of the failure of the image to contain anything close to what's happening. Creation isn’t over, but its task has changed. Not to represent, redeem, or provide virtue signaling. But to subtract, mourn this unbelievable amount of grief, and transmit the impossibility of transmission.

 How did it feel to watch your paintings burn in real time?

It didn’t feel like anything. There was no catharsis. When you’re confronted with a threat, you either flee, fight, or freeze. This was freeze. Total emptiness. The paintings weren’t even there when they were burning. Not really. All those years, all the dreams, labor, and the fragile belief that I could be a professional painter were already gone. What I finally accepted at that moment was simple: I was operating in a hostile environment. One that doesn’t just reject me as an artist, but would prefer I didn’t exist at all. It doesn’t want my vision, it doesn’t want my contribution. It wants silence.

In an interview with Manchester School of Art, where you did your MA in painting, you said: “I see painting as a vehicle to put information into order.” Has this understanding of your practice and role as an artist changed? 

The broadest definition of the artist that I can offer is this: the artist is like a hunter. The hunter doesn't just bring back food, but pushes the edge of the map. Expanding the horizon of the tribe. In the same way, the artist leaves the structure behind, venturing into chaos and returning with new metaphors, new ways of imagining what couldn’t be imagined before. Back then, I saw painters as Don Quixote figures. Fighting for the world even when the fight was absurd, but doing it anyway, because ethically, it felt right. A kind of martyrdom. Maybe that came from how I was raised, as a Shia Muslim. The idea that failure in the name of justice still matters. What connects that old interview to this film is the shared struggle against noise. Both are made inside an oversaturated, hyperstimulated environment. And both are driven by the same internal urge to reduce that noise. To carve out clarity.

In a time when it feels necessary to scream and shout about the horrors we are witnessing, your film has a surprising element of calmness to it. The voiceover performs the essay in a whisper. What was the reason behind this creative decision? 

When I first began working on the film, I collected footage from Gaza. But when it came time to edit, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t justify using real images of suffering. Out of respect. Out of recognition that this mourning isn’t mine to aestheticise. That same refusal extended to sound. I chose not to use audio from Gaza either. Instead, I wanted the film to be slow and quiet. When you are in mourning, you lower your gaze, you lower your voice to make yourself small before the dead. The whisper in the voiceover came from that same impulse. I wanted it to feel close. Like something being shared just between us. Intimacy, not spectacle. Sometimes the quietest tone carries the heaviest charge.

 The film tackles the idea of desensitisation and compliance. What do you encourage other artists to do to break out of this cycle? Is this possible? 

It’s absolutely possible. But first, artists need to break the spell. The art world sells you a promise of visibility, success, and recognition. But it’s a lie. A tiny stage with two seats already reserved for the upper class. So don’t aim for a career, aim for a meaningful life. Forget the solo show, forget the award, forget being seen. What we need instead is to be more fierce and more loyal to each other. Focus on collectivity over individuality. We need to think strategically, spiritually, even and engage with something philosophical. Better to disappear in pursuit of meaning than be embalmed in the trash bin of history.

Finally, will you and can you continue to paint?

I don’t think I’ve reached a dead end. I’ve been thinking constantly about what could come after this. I’ve started to approach painting less as pigment on a surface and more as a philosophical operation. Burning an image printed on paper felt too easy. Too sentimental, like a Hollywood gesture. So I thought, what if I printed on aluminum? A material where the image might fade or scar, but the carrier endures. I’m not against making images, I’m against the inertia of image-making. The ritual of studio-as-habit that has morphed into a daily grind mistaken for practice. I’ll make work only when it speaks into something larger. When it risks meaning. I still consider myself a painter, not out of fidelity to the medium, but because painting is a historical vector. A way of thinking in layers, in time, in ruin. It remains my philosophical instrument.

See more from Parham Ghalamdar here

Article by Edith Matthias