Too Much Past Is a Dangerous Thing

Mahshid Mahboubifar, Too Much Past Is a Dangerous Thing, 2023, Video, 7:42 min © The artist

The work reconstructs the missing half of an Iranian nomadic carpet in the Ethnographic Collection of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD). It interweaves this with the myth of Arachne and Athena, exploring the question: Who weaves which narrative and for what purpose?

Opening of the exhibition “We show what we (don’t) know” of the HGB Leipzig on 12.10.2023 at the Japanisches Palais of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Photo: Oliver Killig

Mahshid Mahboubifar is an artist and filmmaker from Iran, currently based in Berlin. Working with both still and moving images, and through reconstruction of archival materials,  her practice explores how narratives are constructed and preserved.

She graduated in 2025 with a Diplom in Expanded Cinema from the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig and was selected as one of the winners of MdbK [jetzt]. 2025 Positions of Young Art from Central Germany.