apexart Fellow Journal

[apexart-journal]

#vojin hraste - Day 10

Friday, July 3, 2026

Friday turned into a day for rest and recovery. Given the extreme heat wave hitting New York, a lot of city activities were called off. In the morning, I took a one-hour trip to the Bronx River Alliance at Starlight Park for a group kayaking session, only to find out the event had been canceled. I really should have checked beforehand, especially since it took another hour to get back to Union Square. Still, the view from the train—seeing how diverse and interesting the Bronx is—made the trip worth it.

While resting under the AC and waiting for my evening plans—a performance by The Knights chamber orchestra in Bryant Park—I remembered to check the status, and sure enough, that was canceled too due to the high temperatures. I spent the rest of the day doing laundry, cooking, and just relaxing. It was a much-needed break.

[apexart-journal]

#vojin hraste - Day 9

Thursday, July 2, 2026

I started my morning slow and easy, knowing it was going to be a tough day because of the heatwave hitting New York. I watched a video Nia sent me about Seneca Village, a neighborhood that used to be right where Central Park is now. It was the first community of free Black Americans in New York. It’s crazy how recent that was—the settlement was razed to build the park, and the story really only came to light in the 90s. I walked through the park afterward with different eyes.

After the walk, I headed to the Bronx for a class on "The Value of Having a Good Credit." I was the only student there, so after a pretty basic but interesting lecture, I stayed for another half hour just chatting with the instructor about the differences in household economics between the U.S. and Europe. I didn’t know it was normal here to have a bunch of credit cards; back home, we usually just have one. The conversation shifted to soccer since the instructor wanted to know my prediction for the Portugal vs. Croatia match that night.

Back in Manhattan, I walked around a bit, but it was so hot that I arrived at my next activity pretty much baked: a Muay Thai class in front of the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue. Despite the insane heat, it was actually a ton of fun. Once again, I witnessed that amazing sense of community among people who connect over a shared hobby in such a huge city. The instructor strictly ordered me to come back next week, provided it isn't too hot.

After training, I did a quick change and headed to the football fan pit at "The Vessel" in Chelsea for the match. It was crowded and stifling, and the game was incredibly tense and wild. It ended with a controversial Portugal win. It all just wore me out so much that I barely managed to drag myself back to the apartment. In a way, I’m glad Croatia is out—I won't have to go through this kind of agony in this heat again.

[apexart-journal]

#vojin hraste - Day 8

Wednesday, July 1, 2026

It was a really hot day, so I spent the whole morning reading articles and taking care of some work-related tasks back in Zagreb. Early in the afternoon, I had some meetings with Nion and a chat with Nancy. It was nice to talk to them, but it was tough being outside in this heat, so I headed back to the apartment to cool off before going to the "Jungle Cat Comedy" stand-up show at Lincoln Center.

Unfortunately, I arrived at Lincoln Center ten minutes before the show, and the line was already wrapped around the block in an L-shape. After twenty minutes, the guy in charge told us the venue was full and that we’d have to wait for people to leave if we wanted a chance to get in. The line wasn't moving at all, so I walked over to Central Park to cool off for a bit and came back twenty minutes later. People were still waiting. This time I had to join the very back of the line. I waited another fifteen minutes, but it didn't look like I was getting in anytime before the show ended. I’m bummed I missed it since I was really looking forward to the stand-up night. It’s clear that the city is so crowded that I’ll need to get to these free events much earlier in the future. I ended up walking around the nearby neighborhoods a bit and then went over to Union Square.

[apexart-journal]

From June 1 - June 29, 2026 apexart is pleased to welcome Bahar Behbahani outgoing to Harare, Zimbabwe.

Bahar Behbahani is an artist, educator, and collaborator whose interdisciplinary work explores memory, erasure, adaptation, and the search for a sense of place. For over a decade, the Persian garden has served as a central metaphor in her practice—bridging personal history with wider histories of power, climate, and the futurity of ancestral knowledge.

For more information please visit Bahar's Fellowship Page

[apexart-journal]

Bahar Behbahani - Day 28

Last day in Harare. I wonder how I can go through it. It’s Tim’s birthday. It’s my last day. So many farewells at once and I want to keep it open, see what happens.

I start walking. Long walk. I can handle the heat more than what is inside me.

The brother stranger is not a stranger anymore. Nothing feels random.

Nyadzumbe surprises me with a visit with his daughter. They bring a flag. Not just a flag. An old one he washed four times. He says each wash brought something out of it, some story, maybe.

We stand there for a while. No proper goodbye forming.

His daughter looks at me and says, “You have an accent.”

We loved it.

“Yes,” I say, “because I am Iranian and you always stay true to your accent my little big sister.”

I give her the Iranian handwoven textile. Paisley, prosperity, something carried, something passing hands.

No farewell is real.

Tim is smiling somewhere.

I think I get back.

[apexart-journal]

Bahar Behbahani - Day 27

All Africa Village.

Chico and his partner’s intervention. A dedication more than a project. An architectural idea made visible, almost like a teaching space. Each part of Africa represented through dwelling forms, materials, ways of building, ways of living.

It feels like walking through knowledge. Not display, but practice. Techniques, traditions, intelligence that was never absent, only ignored.

There is a kind of joy in it. A reminder that “ancestral” is not past tense.

And then, in the distance, a paper mill. A Chinese company working on a large industrial site. Paper, machines, and toxic liquids moving through pipes and ground that doesn’t look ready for it.

The contrast is sharp without needing explanation.

Still, the main feeling of the day is hope.

As if I met someone who understands something simple and difficult at the same time. You don’t wait for the perfect moment. You build. You gather. You sweat. You bring the village together in whatever form is possible.

I tell my brother well done.

No real farewell. We say we will cross paths again.

[apexart-journal]

Bahar Behbahani - Day 26

Dominic’s Studio Show – Loft3 Gallery.

Stone sculpture opening. Very polished, very familiar in a way I didn’t expect to notice. The art world everywhere has its own language. The same kind of conversations, the same polite distance, the same predictable way people stand in front of work.

I realize I don’t miss it.

Dominic’s work is different though. Playful stone, light hands in heavy material. He is there too, very humble, almost shy with his own success.

It is a crowded opening. I run into people I know. I really do. I know people in Harare now.

After that I rush to a private mbira gathering.

We drive in complete darkness for a while, then arrive at a big house with a garden. I get out of the car unsure. Cold air, no clear signs of what is happening.

Then I hear it.

Mbira from somewhere above, a balcony or a deck, I can’t tell at first. Firelight. People already gathered. I didn’t even realize we would be outside.

Of course I am not dressed for this.

But something shifts when the mbira starts.

I don’t fully understand it, but it feels like it goes somewhere inside the body before thought arrives. They say it is for communicating with spirit.

Mbira dzeNharira is there. I saw them at Grubs in my first week. Now again, here.

Slowly I stop feeling cold.

The fire, the dog, the host, the guests, the sound. At some point it doesn’t separate.

It is very late. Maybe 2 a.m.

[apexart-journal]

Bahar behbahani - Day 25

Last time I walk into Kundai’s backyard.

That small sunny space that held so much in the past days. Therapy, crying, silence, things I didn’t have words for before they happened.

Saying goodbye in broken Shona. Everything feels softer when it is not fully translated. A lot of emotion rushing at once.

I keep thinking, what connects us.

I leave with that question.

Later in the evening I had to push through my antisocial self and go out again. Rewind Thursdays, a bar, a kind of social experiment I didn’t fully agree to.

I didn’t want to go. Especially not alone. Everyone already in groups, already belonging to each other.

I made a small deal with myself. Go at 7, have one drink, leave by 8.

At 2 a.m. I am still there.

Dancing with a new friend in a new club. The kind of night that does not follow any plan I wrote earlier in the day.

He takes me home gently.

I keep thinking about that word.

Home.

[apexart-journal]

Bahar Behbahani - Day 24

Started with recording a podcast with Mono. What a character.

We drifted between stories, music, and history. I talked about Afro-Iranian communities and the music of southern Iran. Strange how quickly rhythm becomes a shared language between two people who just met.

Later in the day, theatre again. This time at Reps Theatre. Very different from Theatre in the Park. Lighter audience, more formal feeling. The play was Elton. It had support from the American Embassy.

Elton still does something to me no matter where I hear it.

After losing my friend Tim, I’m still grieving. So this felt like the second episode of tears in Harare. It arrived without warning, but also without surprise.

[apexart-journal]

Bahar Behbahani - Day 23

Back to Harare.

My small apartment feels like “normal” again. I like that I can say that here.

Ballantyne Park in the morning. Calm, green, almost polite. But even here I keep thinking there is no outside of history. The park, the quiet streets around it, the shape of this part of the city, still carry the older geography of Harare. Who was meant to live where, who gets shade, who gets space to slow down.

It is not visible as an event. It is just embedded in distance.

Afterwards Spar, right behind the park. Strange happiness to find it there. Oat milk on the shelf like a small private relief.

And then I notice it.

This habit I carry with me. Oat milk, a comfort I don’t fully explain here. I feel it slightly out of place, slightly exposed. Not wrong. Just visible.

I drink it anyway.

[apexart-journal]

Bahar Behbahani - Day 22

Hotel checkout. Another farewell. Another 5 a.m. anxiety.

Now I know the script. I walk out, say mangwanani to whoever is awake, sometimes monkeys, sometimes people, and things slowly sort themselves out.

Back to Inter Africa. I think I know the rhythm now. Or I tell myself I do. Nothing here really repeats the same way twice.

I am struggling with how to write all of this. A whole country, layered with experiences. Gratitude, movement, dust, smells, voices, rhythm. How do you hold that in language without flattening it.

The goodbye with Anusa still feels unfinished. Like it didn’t fully land yet. Like it is still somewhere between places.

The ruins, the stones, the walking, the silence.

I don’t have a way to close it properly.

Maybe I don’t need one.

“Every little thing is gonna be alright.” — Bob Marley

[apexart-journal]

Bahar Behbahani - Day 21

Lake Mutirikwi.

Today was about walking toward the places the signs told us not to.

The roads were empty. Hours of silence. Walking, stopping, looking, listening, thinking. Then walking again. Nothing asking to be photographed. I did it anyway.

Anusa and I feel like old souls with young habits. We climbed onto a tractor without thinking twice, wandered for miles, found the dam, wandered some more, and eventually made our way back toward the lake before sunset.

Time moved differently here.

A brother, Rasta, prepared chicken for everyone. Not just cooking. Everything. Slaughtering, cleaning, building the fire, waiting. Three hours passed without anyone asking how long it takes. Care seemed more important than time.

By sunset I wasn't watching the horizon anymore.

I was sitting inside it.

Bob was playing, the lake had gone quiet, and for a little while the day had nowhere else it needed to be.

[apexart-journal]

Bahar Behbahani - Day 20

4:30 a.m.

Anxiety woke up before I did.

A taxi in the dark. A bus station that didn't really look like a station. Travel is exciting, until you're a woman traveling alone. First you make sure you're safe. Then, maybe, you get to be excited.

It was freezing. I kept asking myself why I hadn't packed warmer clothes.

The bus was almost gone by the time I arrived. If it wasn't for the quiet brotherhood between Nyadzumbe and the driver's assistant, they would have left without me.

Inside, another world. Loud music videos playing above the windshield. Children sleeping. People talking across the aisle. Bags everywhere. Life everywhere.

A few hours later we stopped.

"Two minutes."

The driver's assistant sent another woman with me to make sure I found the bathroom and got back in time. A small kindness I'll remember.

By the time we reached Masvingo, the anxiety had finally disappeared.

Now I was ready.

Great Zimbabwe.

Chapter Two: Masvingo

Brother Anusa welcomed me like a brother.

He's a painter and serves on the board of the only theater in town. There is something calm about him. The kind of person who introduces you to a place without trying to explain it too much.

Without thinking, I packed sandwiches, fruit, and nuts for us. I laughed and said I had turned into the Iranian mother.

Then we go towards Great Zimbabwe by a car who picks 7 people instead of 4 and fit them all somehow ...they call it bus for that reason.

A journal of one day there could easily become a novel.

We sat quietly, looking at the stones. Stone after stone, placed with such precision. Such patience. Such trust in making something that would outlive you. It felt less like architecture and more like a practice of spirit.

The museum held another surprise. Among the objects was a broken shard of a Persian bowl.

We were here.

A small piece of home had arrived centuries before me.

For a moment the distance between Iran and Zimbabwe disappeared. The stones, the trade routes, the people who carried objects across oceans. History suddenly felt intimate.

[apexart-journal]

Bahar Behbahani - Day 19

I knew the way to Theatre in the Park today.

Funny, because I had only been there once before. But after last night's conversation, the path already felt familiar. As if a place can become part of your memory before it becomes part of your routine.

This time the play happened.

The Members was sharp, political, and unexpectedly funny. The humor carried the criticism without softening it. You could feel why Cont Mhlanga's writing still matters.

The audience didn't sit quietly waiting for permission to react. They laughed loudly, clapped whenever they felt like it, answered the actors, even sang along at times. There wasn't a clear line between the stage and the seats. Everyone seemed to understand they were making the evening together.

I realized how accustomed I have become to the Western ritual of theater. Sit still. Don't interrupt. Applaud at the right moments.

This felt older than that. More alive.

[apexart-journal]

Bahar behbahani - Day 18

Therapy at noon.

Behind Kundai's office there is a tiny backyard filled with sun. It reminds me of somewhere from childhood, though I can't say where. Maybe just the feeling of it.

We spoke about my friend. The one I lost last week. I cried. My tears seem to arrive more easily in Harare.

In the evening I went to Theatre in the Park to see The Members by Cont Mhlanga. I had been told that Mhlanga was one of Zimbabwe's most important playwrights, someone who kept writing about power, corruption, and ordinary people even when his work was banned and censored. It felt important just to be there.

Except there were only two of us in the audience. later I found out the audience was Percy Zvomuya, the renowned journalist in Harare.

Daves Guzha ( the director and the producer) came out and asked if we would come back tomorrow instead. No ticket policy, no manager, no performance of professionalism. Just an honest question.

Instead, the three of us sat on a bench in Harare Gardens with local handcrafted gin. We talked for hours. About Zimbabwe. Iran. Art. Water. Memory. Theatre. Somehow everything kept returning to the same place.

I forgot there was supposed to be a play. Tomorrow, we continue.

[apexart-journal]

Bahar Behbahani - Day 17

One of those days that kept changing shape.

Lunch was at KwaNandi. Before the food arrived, they brought warm water and soap to wash our hands at the table. Such a beautiful ritual.

I tried goat meat for the first time. Soft sadza, earthy and comforting. Somewhere between the conversation and the meal I learned about totems and realized that, somehow, I had unconsciously chosen Soko. Apparently, I'm unofficially a monkey.

For a moment I felt a little awkward sitting there alone with such a generous feast.

Later I went to Word Kalcha at Alliance Française. Some of the poets recognized me from earlier in the week and came over to say hello. I was happy about that. My growing Gen Z circle.

The poems circled around migration, women, masculinity, inequality, and the weight of expectation for men in Zimbabwe. So many things were being said indirectly and some very raw. So many things still left unsaid.

I walked home with a notebook full of names to remember.

[apexart-journal]

Bahar Behbahani - Day 15

Domboshava

dombo means stone. shava means light.

Three thousand years of cave paintings.

The rocks seemed to hold time differently. I kept looking, then looking again.

A healer appeared from behind the hill and started talking to me. It felt so natural that later I wondered if I had imagined him. Or maybe the mountain imagined both of us.

I left with more questions than memories.