28 Iranian women artists in 3 decade survey Masques of Shahrazad in London

Shadi Ghadirian, Nil Nil, 2008

FEMALE IRANIAN ART

The Masques of Shahrazad to 9-14 March 2009 at Candlestar GalleryEvolution and Revolution of three generations of Iranian women artists

An exhibition featuring work by 28 Iranian women artists runs at The Mall Galleries, London, 9 – 14 March 2009. Opening on International Women’s Day and thirty years on from the upheavals of the Iranian Revolution, the Masques of Shahrazad is an opportunity to survey the Iranian artistic landscape of the last three decades. It is a moment to celebrate established artists and to uncover the new names that will bear the standard for women’s art in Iran for decades to come.

This exhibition takes its cue and inspiration from Shahrazad, or Sheherazade, as the heroine of A Thousand and One Nights is often called. Like the legendary storyteller, these artists have had to adopt feints and stratagems, beguiling, charming and evading authority to sustain their artistic endeavours.

The Masques of Shahrazad includes work by celebrated Iranian artists such as Pariyoush Ganji, Maryam Javaheri, and Mansoureh Hosseini as well as Farideh Lashai, Golnaz Fathi, and Farah Ossouli, alongside younger artists who are beginning to register on the international art scene, namely Samira Alikhanzadeh, Shadi Ghadirian and Tahereh Samadi Tari.

Samirah Alikhanzadeh, The Orange Raquet Team, 2008

The exhibition illustrates themes that range from time, a constant yet fragmented notion as depicted here, to politics. Each generation of artists deals with these themes in very different ways, but there is a shared sense of identity and heritage, expressed through reinterpretations of the Iranian creative vernacular.

Golnaz Fathi, Untitled, 2008

Fariba Farshad, Director of Candlestar and joint curator of the exhibition, says: ‘Gradually, Iran’s female artists have engineered a shift in the limitations and barriers that constrained their predecessors, and have cleverly turned their weaknesses into strengths. Each of the three generations of artists we have selected for this show have had to evolve their own strategy to circumvent authority and express themselves, overcoming their fears and showing things that other people are afraid of expressing. Their works are sharp, subtle and perhaps subversive, without appearing to be any of these things; this is the genius of the masque. And a strange thing has happened: the decision to be an artist is no longer frowned upon. Many of the parents of this new generation of artists know what Shahrazad knew – that in the making of art there lies a path to a kind of liberation.’

Shirin Neshat click to buy book

The exhibition is produced by Candlestar, in association with the Day Art Gallery, Tehran.

Source: Candlestar Gallery press release

Masques of Shahrazad Artists: Mania Akbari, Azadeh Akhlaghi, Samira Alikhanzadeh, NahidArian, Bahar Behbahni, Fataneh Dadkhah, FatemehEmdadian, Yasmine Esfandiary, Golnaz Fathi, Pariyoush Ganji, Shadi Ghadirian, Yassi Golshani, Shahla Habibi, Mansoureh Hosseini, Maryam Javaheri, Shila Kalamian, Delaram Kia, Farideh Lashai, Farah Ossouli, Raziyeh Poursalari, Azadeh Razaghdoost, Tahereh Samadi Tari, Zahra Shahamatpour, Delbar Shahbaz, Maryam Shirinlou, Shideh Tami, Gizella Varga Sinai, Maryam Zandi.

Related links: Candlestar Gallery

Related posts:

• Female Iranian artists trendy thanks to Shirin Neshat – Time Out Dec 2008
• Which artists from Asia are in the Pompidou Centre collection?Dec 2008  – Pompidou is buying Iranian women artists including Shadi Ghadirian.
• Latest on update on market for Iranian Art – New York Times Dec 2008 –  a useful summary survey about art from Iran, the market for it over the last two years and what has been happening in recent auctions.
• First UK survey of Iranian women film, photography artists in London 30 Years of Solitude Nov 2008

Subscribe to Art Radar Asia for news of important upcoming events

Advertisement

Indian artist Reena Kallat’s work mutates in Mumbai

 

Reena Kallat Crease Crevice Contour

FEMALE ARTIST INDIA

Delhi-born and Mumbai-based artist Reena Saini Kallat (1973), wife of auction star Jitish Kallat, presents  Silt of Seasons at Chemould Prescott Road in Mumbai until 17 January 2009. Her chosen media have ranged from bonded marble to fabric and this love for experimentation has given her portfolio an enviable range, which in turn has made her one of Indian contemporary art’s more successful exports says Time Out Mumbai.

Her work has been included in significant survey shows including Chalo! India: A New Era of Indian Art and Mori Art Museum, Japan 2008, India Moderna in Valencia Spain 2008. As an established and internationally-collected artist it is curious that

Saini Kallat is showing a set of works that have been shown in galleries abroad but will be seen for the first time in India (except for “White Heat” and a sewing machine made of bonded marble, which is a new piece).

The exhibition has video works, sculptures and a set of standing works that hover between sculpture and painting. They seem to be large portraits until a closer look reveals them to be made of rubber stamps. Each stamp has a name which is from actual lists of missing persons across the country. See it from the back and the tops of the stamps stand like a battalion of pawns from countless chess sets. “I wanted to make all those names that have been forgotten be remembered again,” she said.

Over the years since her debut in 1998 Kallat’s body of work has mutated and now

Ten years after her first solo show, Reena Saini Kallat almost seems surprised by her own evolution. “One never thought of making art that was political or critical when one was young but I wonder now whether it’s possible to not let that happen,” she said.

Past interests included

In her debut in 1998, she explored the family.

For her 2004 show Black Flute and Other Stories, Saini Kallat painted a world of myths that made pointed references to contemporary demons.

In 2006, Saini Kallat represented colonial history through the works in Rainbow of Refuse.

In another series of similar works, she recreates designs from Agra’s Taj Mahal with rubber stamps. The stamps bear names of labourers who worked on the monument. “It was a discovery for me when I found them in archives because we’ve grown up with textbooks telling us the labourers were nameless and their hands were chopped off but actually they had the right to inscribe their names on what they created,” she said.

Naming and stamping and its associations of identity and control are recurring motifs in this exhibition

Names taken from the peace petition appear on a 10-part photographic work that looks at the idea of motherland and the shifting line of control in Kashmir. They are stamped in red ink, which makes some names look like they’re the mark of something rejected by a government officer or a bleeding bruise. The video work also shows names being written in sand and then being blown away. In another set of photographs, an hourglass has in it grains of rice with names of farmers who have committed suicide written on them. The touristy frivolity of writing names on rice contrasts sharply with the grimness of the farmers’ fate.

Time Out Mumbai 

•  Chemould Prescott Road gallery exhibition Silt of Seasons images, artist bio
• Reena Kallat on Saatchi Online for biography, images, reviews
• Other dealers include Walsh Gallery Chicago, Bodhi Art Gallery Mumbai and Singapore, Nature Morte New Delhi, Sakshi Gallery Bangalore,
• More reviews NBC5 Chicago

More about Indian art, reports from India, 

Subscribe to Art Radar for news about artists to watch