Frequencies: Persian Garden #1

Frequencies is a sonic living room for the residents and visitors of Turku. The iconic brutalist architecture of Sibelius Museum’s inner atrium opens for free to the public, resonating with fascinating works of sound art and new artistic research.

Iranian artist Sina M Fard’s work Persian Garden #1 will be installed in the Atrium for the month of July. The work takes its name from the historic garden tradition of Iran, whose influence extends beyond landscape architecture into poetry, carpets, and miniature paintings. These gardens symbolized both spiritual ideals of paradise and the political power and authority of their owners, serving as spaces for leisure, diplomacy, and elite gatherings.

The installation draws inspiration from Fin Garden in Kashan, a historic site known for its rich architecture and for the assassination of Iran’s prime minister Amir Kabir, a modernizer widely regarded as Iran’s first reformer, in 1852. Using Fin Garden as a model, the four-channel sound installation reimagines a lost garden at the Sibelius Museum through an imagined journey shaped by personal memories, visual narratives, and wandering observation.

SINA M FARD (b. 1987, Rasht, Iran) is a composer, sound artist, and researcher based in The Hague. His work explores the intersection of electroacoustic composition, sound installations, and site-specific projects, often engaging with the political and social dimensions of sound. Through his practice, he investigates how sound shapes perception, identity, and collective memory.