Independent art space / Tehran, Iran
Iran&Co The Exhibition, 3 other projects are featured in our 2nd post, photos by Amirali Ghasemi, Afshin Dehkordi, Farid Jafari and Milad Houshmandzadeh.
Your Majesty by Setareh Jabbari
Installation, 2010
Mixed Technique
Family Album by Setareh Masoumbeiki
Photo Installation,2010
12 Photos mounted on Plexiglas, Wooden Table
Un ange qui passe by Milad Houshmandzadeh
Site specific Sound Installation,2010
Audio Collage Piece, Cans, Water, Tapedeck, Motion Detector
Iran & Co the exhibition and the archive just ended on November 2nd in La Brugeoise, a 1912 power station
an architectural masterpiece and a protected historical monument, the exhibition showcased uniquely
commissioned works by 11 emerging Iranian artist.
The exhibition catalog will be published in early 2011, as the exhibition will be traveling to London next year
Iran & Co is curated by Amirali Ghasemi
Memory of the Azadi Tower by Melika Shafahi
Slide Projection – 2010
The Arc by Mojtaba Amini
Installation, 2010
Wine glasses, Metal Staucture and Fishing Line
Saying by Behrad Javanbakht
“Every end had a beginning” –The standing flag
“What’s right is right, what’s wrong is wrong and who are you to sing along ” – The Fallen flag
Installation, 2010
Sail, Permanent Marker, Coffee, Enamel Paint and Flag Poles
The Power of Christ by Farid Jafari Samarghandi
DVD Loop, 2010
See-Saws by Golrokh Broumandi
Installation, 2010
Wood, Carpet,Mirror, Chair Canning, Wall paper and metal
Photos of this exhibition review are mainly taken by Afshin Dehkordi and the rest of credits goes to
Ehsan Behmanesh, Farid Jafari, Amirali Ghasemi and Milad Houshmandzadeh.
Our big thanks to all of them and the kind people who made all this happen so far.
The rest of review and images will be featured in the following posts… so stay tuned!
Artists:
Nazanin Aharipour|Mojtaba Amini|Golrokh Broumandi|Ali Ettehad|Farid Jafari Samarghandi|Setareh Masoumbeiki|Setareh Jabbari|Behrad Javanbakht|Sona Safaie|Melika Shafahi|Milad Houshmandzadeh
Curator : Amirali Ghasemi
Bruges(Bel) : 24 october -2 november 2010 in the buildings of
‘La Brugeoise’, Vaartdijkstraat 5-7, 8200 Bruges.
Horizon 1: towards a new curatorial platform in the Cultural Centre.
The Cultuurcentrum of Bruges launches its new international curatorial platform called Horizon on the 24th of october 2010. The Cultuurcentrum intends to invite each year one or more guest curators, who develop a range of new projects within the Horizon frame work, both in Bruges as in other countries. In Horizon we focus on the personal and local perspective of the guest curator in relation to the international context. For the first edition the independent Iranian curator Amirali Ghasemi (*1980, Tehran) conceived the multi-layered, itinerant art project Iran&co, together with his curatorial team and the participating artists.
Iran 2005-2010.
The last five years, the international art world was engulfed by hundreds of exhibitions and publications dealing with art from Iran and the Middle East, with again an emphasis on Iran.
In so far that some voices speak, since 2005, about an ‘Iran Boom’.
This ‘new artistic wave’ brings to mind memories of the ‘sudden apparition’ of contemporary art from China, India or Eastern Europe, in the nineties.
The curatorial team of Iran&co started to analyse this phenomenon, emphasizing the specific Iranian condition, both within Iran and the diaspora, and its different representations produced in a mainly ‘western context’.This explains moreover the choice of the title: Iran&co. It refers to the realm of companies and multinationals, the businessess actually producing the brand ‘Iran’.
Lastly, Iran&co functions also as a trope for other typical national, identity based or so-called ethnic-cultural projects.
Iran&co, the Archive, Documentary: Iran Beyond Borders (1960-2010)
Iran&co consist of three distinct parts: an exhibition, an archive and a documentary installation, which evolves constantly in time and space.In Bruges the visitor will witness a first presentation of this project. The archive and documentary installation on show, cover only a fraction of the existing material.In the second stage in London(fall 2011), a more elaborated version will be exhibited.The first part consists of a site specific Exhibition of contemporary art, made by 11 emerging artists, mostly under 30,9 based in Iran and 2 studying outside the country (in France & Canada).
The exhibition consists of exclusively commissioned art works, which is a totally different approach to most projects held in the contemporary Iranian context expect for few biennial appearances, where the focus lies on object related artworks conceived chiefly for galleries and collectors. In Iran&co, the artists tackle a wide range of issues central to the Iran&co project such as: ‘The question of identity in thematic based exhibitions, the production and representation of forms of ‘Iranianness’, the status of the artist from a performative perspective, the reanactment of the position of the ‘Iranian artist’, themes as the void, absence and invisibility as part of the Iranian condition beside the humour and playfulness in often metaphorical textual and sculptural forms invisibility as part of the Iranian condition, the question of neo-Orientalism, etc.
The second part consists of an extensive Archive, which in the first exhibition stage in Bruges focusses mainly on the exhibitions with art from Iran, and held in the West in the last decade.Besides the important cartographic dimension, the Archive can shed light on a range of representations, exotic and other stereotypes about the current Iranian condition.
The third part consists of the extensive video-documentary Iran beyond borders’(1960- 2010). The curatorial team gathered more then 100 new interviews with some of the key players, from both in Iran and outside the country. This is an ongoing process which will be shown to the public in London in 2011 and probably beyond in different forms and formats.As with the Archive, the documentary installation is important for the cartography of both modernist and contemporary art movements. Further more it gives the visitor some incisive views on the Iran Boom, and the general artistic history of Iran from 1960 till now.
Unique interviews with Rose Issa, Shadi Ghadirian, Anthony Downey, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Hamid Keshmirshekan, Okwui Enwezor, Khosrow Hassansadeh Catherine David, Farshid Mesghali, Alireza SamiAzar, Vali Mahlouji, Shadi Mahmoudian, Koroosh Adim, Iman Afsarian, Rozita sharfjahan, Hamid Severi, Jinoos Taghizadeh, Haleh Anvari , Poya Arianpour, Mahmoud Bakhshi and Barbad Golshiri, among many other artists, collectors, curators and experts.
Info: Cultuurcentrum Brugge, 00 32 50 44 30 40
Curatorial team: Amirali Ghasemi, Michel Dewilde, Azar Mahmoudian
Poster designed by Behrad Javanbakht
The exhibtion travels to London (november 2011) & Berlin (october 2012)
Organisation: Cultuurcentrum Brugge in collaboration with Parkingallery Tehran
www.ccbrugge.be, www.parkingallery.com
www.iranandco.com, www.ccbhorizon.be
On the Treshold
It is not that heavens loathe people of Fearland and impedes rain. It fears to grow a wasteland on the land of anxiety, which, although blooming from seeds of death, it roots and grows and blooms nothing.[i] In the wasteland, where every sapling resembles a dead child, wind is a useless cradle and sunlight is what submits horrifying shadows of the day to the continuity of horrible nights. Under the sunlight, nothing is new, for according to Fearlanders’ beliefs, what has been will be and what has happened is what will happen.[ii] Nothing is new: the new will result in new fears. Thus, every sound resembles a horrible cry: even if it is a breeze passing through wasteland meadows, it comes to ears as a howl. Every movement is threatening, is a shaking of the stature of the people of Fearland who have for long been standing on their motionlessness and silence. Although they have spoken out, their mouths were sealed; they recorded that others have burnt, that they have sown and others have garnered and raped their soil: on top of adobes of fright, with dull eyes and silent tongues, they have built such a tall barrier around themselves.[iii] It is inescapable that they are the barrier. People of Fearland who are afraid and weary of repeating their horrifying history, write the history of fear. Within these walls, fear is a writing style applied to writing of doubt and reading of anxiety. Thus fear robs the pen of fear against the paper of silence and hatred is born thereafter diluting it.[iv] It is as such that, fearing the enemy and his curses, they write in a difficult and incomprehensible language so as to render it a harmless sophistry.[v] Thus they apply to themselves a procedure applied to words. They wrap themselves: faces covered with masks and bodies with sheepskin. In thousand different shapes: an executioner with a dagger in his hand resembles a surgeon while a patient announces cure and miracle with his cries.[vi] Any escape from this enclosure is in vain, even if there is a loophole and they can escape in every direction, still fear is an inescapable shadow, unless they head for their solitude where there is no other, no people, no sunlight and no shadow, no shadow such as that of fear. For, the shadow of man is the shadow of his flesh; hence they escape to the depths of time, to where the glow of day gives clarity only to nightmares while the darkness of night renders delirious the humilities of the day.[vii] There, sleep comes after wake and wake after sleep, over and over again; time transforms into a cyclic eternity without end and it is pointless to think of it and think in it, for if it is spoken out, since there is no audience, it will resemble a delirious monologue, a fearful reverberation of one’s own voice. Be it that solitude is the absence of the other as well as the denial of one’s presence. Such serenity in the absence of others turns into a fear of an inexistent being of one’s self, and baseless fear slides into melancholy. Thus, how difficultly one who has taken refuge in solitude from the harm of the other, recreates him in a different way and in the shape of a ghost resembling herself. Thus the house turns into the mirror of the house of ghosts, reflecting hatred and fear.[viii] People of Fearland embrace their ghosts and give birth to dead children[ix], children calmed down by the sound of the lullaby of death, put to sleep by the aftershock poems of the childbirth of fear[x], who never die again for they have never stepped into the domain of life:
Infants of mothers deprived of singing…[xi]
Homayoon Askari Sirizi, Fearland, Oct. 2010
Translated by Bavand Behpoor
Notes:
[ii] From: Old Testament, Ecclesiastes 1:10.
[iii] Cf. Katayoon Karami, Untitled, 2010
[iv] See: Gazaleh Hedayat, Writing Style, 2010
[v] See: Mehran Mohajer, Whiteboard: Photographer’s Dash-writing, 2009-10.
[vi] For further reading, see: Baktash Sarang Javanbakht, Untitled, combination of mixed media and drawing on paper, 2010.
[vii] Mehraneh Atashi, 2007, series of photographs, 2007
[viii] Ibid. For further reading see: Mehraneh Atashi, Fear and Loathing, 2006.
[ix] See: Barbad Golshiri, Calder for Dead Children, from Freedom Lovelorn series, 2010
[x] Cf. Farhad Fozooni, Poems of Aftershock, 2010.
[xi] Rozita Sharafjahan, It Deprived Me of Song, 2010.
15. Oct – 15. Oct 10 Delfina Foundation
Free. Rsvp required at rsvp@delfinafoundation.com
18:00 – 19:00
Artist Amirali Ghasemi discusses Iran & CO, his ongoing curatorial project. Iran & CO includes an exhibition, a documentary and an archive project. The exhibition gathers a number of site and context specific commissions conceived by the newest generation of Iranian artists, who have all been invited to produce works outside of the gallery space.
The ‘documentary/film/installation’ Iran Beyond Borders (1960-2010) maps out the history of modern and contemporary art in Iran, from the late 50s to today. It aims to archive and review more than 100 Iranian art exhibitions in the last 10 years, and features interviews with key figures of the contemporary Iranian art scene (such as Khosrow Hassansadeh, Ghazel, Alireza Samiazar, Fereydoun Ave, Hamid Keshmirshekan, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Barbad Golshiri and Rose Issa) on subjects including the impact of the market on artistic practices, the local in relation to the global, the politics of representation and identity. The film will be premiered in Bruges, Belgium, in October 2010.
Amirali Ghasemi was born in Tehran in 1980. He graduated in 2004 with a BA in graphic design from Central Tehran Azad University. In 1998, Ghasemi established Parkingallery, an independent project space in Tehran, and in 2002, Parkingallery.com, a virtual gallery, which has become an online platform for many young Iranian artists. He has shown his photography/videos/design works in Sweden, the Netherlands, France, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Canada, USA, Australia, Turkey, Indonesia, South Korea, China, Taiwan and Japan. In addition, he has directed audiovisual projects with Iranian rock bands. 
As a curator, he has directed many exhibition projects for Parkingallery project space and other institutions. These have included Among Them: Deep Depression (2004), Transition (2005), Deeper Depression (2006), Lost in No Space (2006) and Limited Access (2007).
Iran & CO is a production of the Cultural Centre of Bruges, with the support of the Vlaamse Gemeenschap, and Parkingallery projects Tehran.
This talk is part of a series of events which focuses on emerging artistic networks and strategies in the youthful Iranian capital.
The Knowledge – Stop 2: Tehran. A series of events between 5 and 19 October 2010, at The Delfina Foundation. A journey through visual culture, one city at a time. After Damascus, our second stop will be Tehran. With contributions from Mahmoud Bakhshi, Amirali Ghasemi, Malu Halasa, Vali Mahlouji, James Neil and Solmaz Shahbazi.
All events at The Delfina Foundation, rsvp required. Please email rsvp@delfinafoundation.com
For more information, please see website.
http://www.delfinafoundation.com/exhibitions_and_talks.php
Series of events between 5 and 19 October 2010, at The Delfina Foundation.
A journey through visual culture, one city at a time. After Damascus, our second stop will be Tehran. This series of events focuses on emerging artistic networks and strategies in the youthful Iranian capital. With contributions from Amirali Ghasemi, Malu Halasa, Vali Mahlouji, Mahmoud Bakhshi, James Neil and Solmaz Shahbazi.
Continue reading The Knowledge – Stop 2: Tehran at Delfina Foundation
Muniments
1 October – 11 November 2010
Black Dog Publishing, 10A Acton Street, London – WC1X 9NG
T: + 44 (0) 207 713 5097
press@blackdogonline.com
Monday – Friday 12-5 pm
www.dehkordi.co.uk
Muniments is the first UK solo show of the photographic and text installation work of the Iranian born British artist Afshin Dehkordi. Focusing on the tangled and contradictory relationships between Iran and the West, Muniments peels open the subtle layers of public and private ownership in contemporary Iranian society.
The works display the underlying drama and construction of the ‘story,’ inherent within the language of journalism and an important concern within Muniments. A shift in awareness occurs as the mix between migration, architecture and borders reveals seductive social and personal ideals or longings that are sharply displaced from focus. The relationship to documentary and fiction is never quite separated in Muniments. We are shown through photographs and texts the special complexity of borders—that different kinds exist all around us and that the understanding of the border as a line or single place is perhaps obsolete.
The exhibition is set within two spaces that hold an ambiguous physical edge to the photographs and the texts. From the mountains of Tafresh, to the urban cityscapes of Tehran and to the salt desert of Daryache-Namak. Muninents interest lies in the politics of appearance, in terms of tracing experiences, memories and histories that are rendered largely invisible and how this invisibility occurs in reality.
This is the afterlife of Dehkordi’s migration between Iran and Britain and it calls attention to what extent that part of the journey is rendered visible and invisible. The exhibition appears to move between the surfaces of a personal use of utopia—not escapist or apolitical, but one where it becomes a critical force against the perceived reality that exists and the closed bi-cultural language of the past.
Dehkordi was born in Iran in 1975. He studied Mathematics at University College London and Economics at Harvard. He has exhibited internationally, and cultivates his artistic practice alongside award-winning work for the BBC. Dehkordi’s work is included in Black Dog Publishing’s Contemporary Art in The Middle East.
Human Emotion Project
Curated by Sohrab M. Kashani and Alison Williams
September 7th 2010 – 6:30 PM to 9 PM
Mohsen Art Gallery
No.42, East Mina Blvd., Farzan Street, Nadji Street, Zafar, Tehran, Iran
September 11th 2010 – 6:30 PM to 9 PM (Private screening)
Sazmanab Project Gallery
Screening of international video artworks by artists:
48073 (Netherlands), Hakan Akcura (Turkey/Sweden), Amina Bech (Norway), German Britch (Argentina), Michael Chang (Denmark), Glenn Church (USA), Michael Douglas Hawk and Lizet Benrey (Germany/Mexico), Anthony Elliot (UK), Danny Germansen and Joshua Sandler (Denmark/USA), Alberto Guerreiro (Portugal), Niclas Hallberg (Sweden), Neil Howe (Australia), Ulf Kristiansen (Norway), Mads Lungdahl (Denmark), Adamo Macri (Canada), Manfred Marburger (UK), Bill Millett (UK), Jerry King Musser (USA), Behjat Omer (UK/Kurdistan), Elena Skoko (Italy), Edwin Stolk (Netherlands) and Anders Weberg (Sweden).
6:45 PM – 8 PM
Screening of Iranian video artworks including works by artists:
Negar Behbahani, Varesh Darvish, Samira Eskandarfar, Maryam Fakhimi, Amirali Ghasemi, Ghazaleh Hedayat, M. R. Heydary, Behnam Kamrani, Simin Keramati, Khosro Khosravi, Farzad Kohan, Amirali Mohebbinejad, Bijan Moosavi, Neda Razavipoor, Hamed Sahihi and Rosita Sharafjahan.
8:15 PM – 9:15 PM
Shilan Borhani | Shamim Borhani | Mikael Rahmani | Fariborz Rahimi | Arash Zaman | Sarah Saedinejad | Shima Farhadi | Zaniyar Lotfi
Posters Designed by Foad Sharifi
9/11/2010 to 9/22/2010
16:00 to 20:00
Address: No 23 Golbarg Alley, Abidar Ave. Sanandaj, Iran
Parkingallery.com in collaboration with Mohsen Gallery, Tehran Presents
Belgium INC*
Video presentation
Curated by Michel Dewilde
Pieter Geenen | Jasper Rigole | Nel Aerts | Kelly Schacht | Bram De Jonghe | Rozemarijn Spilliaert | Daniel Dewaele
Saturday 28th of August 2010, 7 pm
Mohsen Art Gallery
Address: No. 42, East Mina Blvd, Farzan Street, Naji Street, Zafar, Tehran
Telephone: 22255354
