FROM L.A. TO TEHRAN: MAPPING THE TRANSNATIONAL STATE OF CONTEMPORARY IRANIAN ART
AMIR H. FALLAH, ROYA FALAHI, ASAD FAULWELL, SHADI GHADIRIAN
OCTOBER 6 2009 - OCTOBER 31 2009
The Guild Art Gallery presents From LA to
Tehran: Mapping the Transnational State of Contemporary Iranian Art featuring
works by artists Amir H Fallah, Roya Falahi, Asad Faulwell and Shadi Ghadirian. The show is accompanied by a text
contextualizing
the works of these artists within and outside of the conditions
that currently surround Iran.
Maymanah Farhat provides an interesting and engaging look at the works of these artists, three of whom are based in LA while
the other works in Tehran. Farhat explains:
Although the epicenter of contemporary Iranian culture lies in Tehran,
its artists are active all over the globe. From its pioneering
modernist
painters to its cutting-edge conceptual artists, the peripheries of Iranian art
are seemingly endless, having made significant
waves in the international scene
over the past decade. Propelling this borderless phenomenon is a dynamic group of artists and
curators whose work remains in constant exchange with events “back home” in the
republic. In Los Angeles, which contains one of
the largest populations of
Iranians in diaspora, this is most visible with the generation that immigrated
to or was born in the US shortly
after the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution in
1979 and the onset of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980. With an estimated 72,000
Iranian-Americans
living in the greater Los Angeles area, the city has become
an important satellite of Iranian culture….While artists in diaspora are
confronted with the negotiation of various
cultural trajectories, those in Iran face an equally complex environment, with
a political
atmosphere that is magnified to extremes in every aspect of life.
There the push and pull between government-sanctioned culture
and a population
that is all too well-versed in the latest global trends in art, technology and
fashion makes for a unique, if not
contradiction-filled, brand of twenty-first
century society.
The show opens Oct 6 2009 at The Guild, New York with an opening reception between 6:30 – 8:30 pm. The exhibition will continue to Oct 31 2009.
