Few people see beauty in things that are left to perish, and Iran and people are one of the women who have the insight and fertile imagination that have enabled us to turn ugliness into beauty.
In the city of La Marsa in the northern suburbs of the Tunisian capital, Iran and the 48-year-old people in its warehouse are working on converting old iron pieces or what is termed “scrap” into valuable artifacts and statues, using their talent, which they discovered by chance.
Despite her dazzling craftsmanship and mastery of the art of converting useless metal trash into works of art, Iran has never attended the Faculty of Fine Arts nor studied any kind of craft arts, as it is a graduate of French Literature.
“I studied French literature and practiced the profession of teaching this language for years, before the scrap metal took me to another world where expired things turn into finished statues of value,” Iran says in an interview with Sputnik.
She added, “My story began with scrap metal through drawing, before I developed a strong desire to make things with my own hands and with my own fingerprint.” And she continued, “I used to form incomplete models and then fix them until I learned how to sculpt and weld metals.”
And it seems that Iran’s experience in painting helped her to give an artistic and realistic touch to the sculptures that she makes, as it makes them come to life after they were just rusty metal pieces and full of dirt.
Iran and People link the worlds of literature and art, saying: “People usually wonder about how I left the teaching profession to devote myself to scrap art, while I personally find a strong relationship between these two fields. creativity”.
Imagination art
Iran managed, after a short time, to transform its warehouse, which it called “Le balon rouge – the red balloon”, into a shrine full of statues and art pieces depicting various models such as bicycles, fictional human figures, balloons and chandeliers that adorn the ceilings of homes and shops.
Wannas explains to Sputnik what the name of her warehouse means, saying: “I chose to name the red balloon because it reflects joy and joy, and it is the same feeling that I have when I look at scrap pieces, how they turned into artistic models after people put them in the landfill.”
Iran describes the stages that the piece of art goes through to reach its final shape, explaining that the first stage, which takes a lot of time and effort, is thinking and imagining the shape of the object, then searching for iron pieces that fit with it and cleaning them from impurities, then bending them by welding, and finally painting and impregnating them. Colors that match their being.
Iran summarizes the process of transforming scrap into statues and figures with the phrase “the art of imagination”, considering that imagination is the backbone of its work, and explained, “I do not define the shape of the piece of art, but rather leave my imagination to lead me to it. Sometimes, for example, I start making a man and then the stereoscopic suggests to me another idea completely far from First “.
Iran’s presence inside the scrap heaps was not easy to accept, neither for her family, which sees it as a place full of dirt and a potential source of diseases caused by rusty iron parts, nor for people who survive by collecting scrap and are surprised by the presence of a woman inside an iron waste dump.
The art models manufactured by Iran require it to search for iron pieces inside the “Judea” landfill located in the suburb of Al-Marsa, where there are dozens of people who oversee the dump or who also earn their living from collecting scrap and then selling it.
Regarding this, Iran says: “My presence in the midst of these people was a strange thing for many and sometimes suspicious, as they find it strange that there is a woman inside a scrap dump.”
And she continued: “Some of them refused to even deal with me, but today the picture changed, and my presence among them became a source of joy for them. I simply became one of them, and even my family became a source of support and encouragement for me.”
Inside the junk dump, everything becomes valuable to Iran, as it not only collects the pieces it deems appropriate to complete its figures, but also picks up all the iron pieces that it finds on its way, regardless of their shape and no matter how heavy they are.
Iran is not looking, through collecting scrap, to practice its hobby of transforming iron pieces into works of art that dazzle its visitors and nurture its desire for creation and creativity, but also to communicate a message that it is possible to make use of the things left for destruction through recycle and adapt them in useful areas.