NASIM NASR: My name is Nasim Nasr.
I've been making video art, performance, sound,
and predominantly, photographic images,
based on East and West,
and the similarities and the differences,
and how they can come together in one image, in one performance,
and how they might reject each other,
as well as they complete each other.

NAVA: What are the main challenges you've experienced in your arts career?

NASIM NASR: So, I don't know where to start.
Firstly, of course,
the beginning of the challenge
starts from being a female artist
where I was growing up,
and then to deal with it and try to understand it,
as a female and as an artist,
I don't have a place where I was born.
So, I moved to Australia,
and the challenges started to totally change
in a different way.
So, the new challenges are, of course,
money.
So, finding finance for every project
and how to make your next series of work
is the biggest challenge at the moment.
Also to deal with my cultural background,
where I am still an exotic and alien
to this whole new culture
that I am part of, and how to fit in,
and how to be part of this art world
that I am now entering.
So, these are with me every day.

NAVA: Describe some of your significant international or national experiences. What have they enabled you to achieve?

NASIM NASR: I did go to Istanbul Biennial, just to visit to art fair.
And that was a very significant time,
in my practice,
when the whole idea of dealing with object and old historical object
and how can bring it to the contemporary language,
started shaping,
so, I was walking in the streets of Istanbul
and I saw a man walking,
a lot of men with the worry beads in their hand
and I straightaway got connected to my grandfather back home.
When I was a child, and he was using with...
Walking with the same worry beads and praying everyday
and then I... It inspired me
for the whole new series of work I've made since,
and exhibited quite in many of projects
and I think that trip was very, very special,
for just a spark
and inspire me in that moment
to make this whole new series of work
called "Worry Beads" and "33 Beads",
and you may have seen it around.
So, there's video work of quite a lot of medallists
and men playing with this, in very cropped shots,
and then there are female version that is myself in images
and changing that male persona with female
and placing myself in the work.
So, if this object just can also belong to a woman,
so a woman can be worried as well.
So, why this only can be seen in the hands of men
in those regions?

NAVA: Why is art important?

NASIM NASR:I think art is important individually
and then again nationally, internationally,
because if one day, in the future,
I can add a female figure to our female artists,
in Australia or in the world,
I'll be very happy.
So, I think art is very important for a female artist especially,
because we don't have many of them.
In a bigger picture,
art is important because it always last.
And it stays with us,
and human wouldn't last but art will.