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regarding Iran
the apparent acquiescence
of conceptual poetics
Curated by: Shaheen Merali
Artists: Mohammad Hossein Emad,
Barbad Golshiri, Peyman Hooshmandzadeh, Farideh Lashai, Amin
Nourani, Shirin Neshat and Mitra Tabrizian
The Guild Art Gallery is pleased to
present regarding Iran the apparent acquiescence of conceptual
poetics curated by Shaheen Merali, opening on March 11th 2011.
It is the third exhibition of an ongoing curatorial initiative
that has so far been produced in two different countries. Thus
far, the curator, Shaheen Merali, has worked with Kunsthalle Brot,
Vienna for The Promise of Loss and at the Tokyo Gallery for
The Stalking of Absence, to present work by artists that
investigates and provides a generous account of Iran’s
contemporary situation. The aesthetic inventions of these artists
provide exciting probabilities for an inquiring audience to
develop an understanding of issues pertaining to Iran and its
contested place in the world.
For The Guild, Mumbai, eight
artists’ work from within and without Iran is presented as a
medium scale group exhibition opening on Friday, the March 11,
2011, close to the occasion of the Persian new year; Norouz. The
research for this exhibition involved both studio visits and some
remote conversations, finally curating the artists’ works for the
first ever presentation of work in India by these contemporary
artists who live and work in Iran and also in England and the
USA.
Much of the artists’ work is found
in the International arena of a visual culture that is affected by
a sense of belonging and longing that permits specific identity
politics that are conclusively inflected and wrapped in
assemblages, based on taking an ethical position encased within a
poetic distance.
The curatorial position has
considered the following two observations:
i) Curating
any regional or ethnic domain, including that of Iran, is made
difficult by the sophisticated, cultural palimpsest of the region,
its traditions and its people, although it is still important,
even necessary, to evaluate its specific aesthetic and cultural
developments.
ii)
Historically, the country is of ontological
importance and has been a domain of highly discursive thinking
within its expanses. In its present constellation, Iran has
suffered and endured many different circumstances and faced
specific challenges from a range of biased nations and
religiosities; this, combined with its own reactive epithet,
provides for a very pertinent set of conditions which enables the
production as well as sets down the role and rules, of aesthetics
which have had to function, until now, within a curtailed freedom.
An evolutionary aesthetics of
adaptation and an approved cultural code has emerged. Within this
curtailment of immobilised consent and the threat of the
eradication of dissenting voices, a new formula of the putative
whole has emerged, an increasingly conscious alphabet of poetic
and political conjunctures.
A catalogue will be produced with
installation views and a talk with the curator will be organised
in the first week of the exhibition. |
