Per Un Pugno Di Euro, 2007
with Kristina Paustian and Martina Schöne-Radunski
Photographs, and Live Performance Video
Photography 200 x 145 cm.

By representing this characters himself, as an Iranian citizenship living in Europe for almost 20 years, he thematizes the complex and dichotomic relationship of the self-perception and how others perceive you, the question about seeing and being seen. Representing the cliché imagination of migrants he aims to hold a mirror before us and reflect the negative conceptions of chauvinism, terrorism and criminality, which have been cultivated in many cases in the western society - particularly after 9/11. At the same time the aggression potential, which emerges from the characters is sometimes considerable. By playing these characters himself, Entekhabi dislocates their aggressive potential, which they communicate us through their latent threat, on himself. Through the personification of the clichés which are object of social attention emerges the aspect of the auto aggression and self mortification.
The project "Per un pugno di euro, however, is somewhat more cheerful, and functions in some sense like a sociological experiment: Shahram Entekhabi, Kristina Paustian and Martina Schoene-Radunski, left their warm apartments without even one penny in their pockets to experience a day of real gipsy feeling. To survive the day through hunger, their alter egos "Rosa" and "Zolinka" play and sing Russian folk songs to later hand out their earned alms to "Roman", the self proclaimed "watchdog".
Apart from that, "Per un pugno di euro" is more than a work about constructed self-experience. It deals with the social movement that has been affected by the eastern enlargement. As it is now easier to cross all European borders, you feel the changes in its townscape: the variety of people grows.

(Deutsch)
Shahram Entekhabi, Kristina Paustian und Martina Schoene-Radunski verlassen ihre wohlgeheizten Wohnungen ohne auch nur einen einzigen Cent in der Tasche, um einen Tag als Roma & Sinti zu verbringen. Um dem Hunger zu entkommen, spielen und singen Rosa und Zolinka russiche Volkslieder, um ihre erworbenen Spenden später an Roman, den selbsternannten ‘Aufpasser’ abzuführen.
-Darüberhinaus ist die Arbeit Per un pugno di euri mehr als eine geplante Selbsterfahrung. Es handelt von der gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung durch die vollzogene Osterweiterung. Da es nun im Allgemeinen einfacher ist alle Europäischen Grenzen zu durchqueren, werden Veränderungen im Stadtbild bemerkt: die Vielfalt der Menschen.

2008: Emerging Discourse II: Performance and Mimicry, curated by Shaheen Merali, Bodhi Art, New York, USA