"Standing off to one side. Seeing only the world in fragments, there won’t be any other one. Moments, crumbs, fleeting configurations—no sooner have they come into existence than they fall to pieces. Life? There’s no such thing; I see lines, planes and bodies, and their transformations in time. Time, meanwhile, seems a simple instrument for the measurement of tiny changes, a school ruler with a simplified scale—it’s just three points: was, is and will be."
—Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel prize winner and author
Exhibition: Sixteen Fragments: Walking as an Artform
Sepa Sama; Walker
Sepa Sama is an artist and photographer with a Doctor of Arts, Doctoral School of the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław. He focuses on walking as artistic research. He studied architecture at Sci-Arc and art and urban design at UCLA in Los Angeles.
Now his work integrates architecture, art, and the environment, utilizing a transdisciplinary approach.
He explores cultural and urban landscapes across Asia, the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Australia.
Portrait of an Artist
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Profile photo by Janno Bergmann, taken during the Copper Leg Art Residency, Estonia, March 2022.
"I got to walking from photography, mainly because of my long walks, sometimes up to nine hours, basically, the whole day, and those were the richest days of my life spent time outside."
— Sepa Sama
Tell The Museum a little about your life.
It has been a journey through lands and disciplines. I was born in Tabriz, along the Silk Road. I wrote my first book in Yazd, in the desert—a kind of second birth. I have walked through architecture, poetry, exile, and academia. I have published twenty books, and each is woven with movement and memory.
Who is your inspiration?
Omar Khayyam—poet, astronomer—guides my work. As an architect, I believe we must use both wings: analytical and poetic. Yet today, I see extreme inequalities between art and science, privilege and displacement.
“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” --Omar Khayyam
What shapes your work?
Displacement and light. My journey is shaped by being displaced, learning across borders, and carrying pain not only mine, but inherited. Still, I ask: Is the world opening up or closing down? For whom? There is always light. And we will find it.
What words of wisdom do you have for us?
The wisdom of the body cannot be digitized. The closet, for me, is a story of destruction and rebirth. The gallery—ours—is a space of listening.
Why photography?
Photography is my way of witnessing. Of offering presence. It complements walking—together they form a double exposure of the world and the self.
Why walking?
Walking is my way of knowing, remembering, resisting, and giving form to ideas not yet born.
Sixteen Fragments
Exhibition Statement:
The Museum of Ideas presents Sepa Sama 16 Fragments.
"Perhaps we should trust fragments, as it is fragments that create constellations capable of describing more, and in a more complex way, multi-dimensionally. Our stories could refer to one another in an infinite way, and their central characters could enter into relationships with each other."
—Olga Tokarczuk, December 7, 2019 Nobel Lecture
This notion of fragments became a sort of inspiration for me as I thought about sharing Sepa Sama's work here. Photography is a thoughtful expression of pieces and parts of things that exist all around us. Practically speaking, it is an image created by light striking a surface. So it is always a visual representation of something around us captured and preserved for us to notice. It is a way for us to represent the many fragments all around us all of the time.
If we pay attention, we see each photograph as simply a fragment of life.
OR...
"Life? There’s no such thing; I see lines, planes and bodies, and their transformations in time."
Later in her Nobel lecture, Tokarczuk says,
“Seeing everything also means a completely different kind of responsibility for the world, because it becomes obvious that every gesture 'here' is connected to a gesture 'there,' that a decision taken in one part of the world will have an effect in another part of it, and that differentiating between 'mine' and 'yours' starts to be debatable. So it could be best to tell stories honestly in a way that activates a sense of the whole in the reader’s mind, that sets off the reader’s capacity to unite fragments into a single design, and to discover entire constellations in the small particles of events.”
Rather than telling the whole story, as Tokarczuk endeavors to do with her novel-writing---Sepa Sama's images speak honestly about one piece of a much grander story. They are single gestures, pieces of a design. They invite wonder about the broader constellation and the greater event they are part of.
But they also remind us to stay present to the fragments that present themselves around us.
Remember?
“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” --Omar Khayyam
As Sepa walks, he becomes proximate to the fragments that surround each of us, if we might notice them. And if we might also wonder about the broader context and story, they are part of.
I invite you to visit a fragment of Sepa's work below.
--Shannon Mullen O'Keefe
Note: Images below are fragments of fragments. They are parts of images. If you are curious about original dimensions or might be interested to purchase some of Sepa's work please reach out via ENQUIRY.
to learn more. Please reference title of image in the enquiry.
We invite you to peruse the gallery.
16 Questions
For a Walker
(for others; for places; and sometimes for myself.)
—Sepa Sama
Activations
1. Standing, Where do you stand in this world?
2. Start, How did the walking start?
3. Staying, What stays with you from your walks?
4. Stress, How does walking reduce stress?
5. Sublime, When can walking be sublime?
6. Uncharted Territory, Is there uncharted territory near you?
7. Version, What is the walker version of you?
8. Where are you from? Why is that the most asked question and how can we change that to who are you instead?
9. Wingspan, What is your wingspan in cm?
10. Line, Who drew the line?
11. Mind, What is going on in the walker’s mind?
12. Noticing while Walking, Things we notice and how others don’t—and why? (Walker 2019)
13. Pockets, What do you carry in them on walks?
14. Remembering Walks, Which walks of your life do you remember?
15. Seas, How many seas of the world have you seen?
16. Silk Road, Where are you from? I am from the Silk Road.
Source: Sepa Sama, Notes on Walking: Dandelion has no Field (2022), ISBN: 978-91-527-2789-8
Follow Sepa on Instagram
Walking Lexicon.
Walking Lexicon is a poetic and research-based project unfolding as a hybrid book of thousands of entries—each reflecting on walking as a way of thinking, feeling, resisting, and being. Rooted in Sepa Sama's doctoral work and a bibliography of over 200 titles, the Lexicon weaves together photography, minimal writing, and conceptual reflection. This is his twentieth book, part of two decades of artistic and academic publishing.
It will be a quiet, layered work—walking through words, metaphors, languages, landscapes, and shared thought.
If you are interested to sponsor a print version, or public installation, enquire below.
INSPIRATION
"Art has to be something that makes you scratch your head"
--Edward Ruscha
Edward Ruscha, is cited as an inspiration in Sepa Sama's doctoral resesarch about photography and walking. Ruscha is known for creating several artist's books. In addition to his work in painting, film, drawing and printmaking, he is known for his street photography.
INSPIRATION
For Sepa: What about Olga Tokaruk is so inspiring to you?
"Tenderness is the most modest form of love. It is the kind of love that does not appear in the scriptures or the gospels, no one swears by it, no one cites it...It appears wherever we take a close and careful look at another being, at something that is not our 'self.'"
—Olga Tokarczuk