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From Iran with Love, Iranian artists in The Hague
I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere existence.
The curator, artist and gallery manager, Mitra Jashni, who left Iran for Ecuador in 2010, moved to the Netherlands in 2015. She received over 300 responses from artists in Iran to a call for this exhibition and residency in the Hague. While some of these Iranian artists have long careers, such as Karim Allahkhani who teaches at the Arts Academy in Kerman, none are international names. The show offers a taste of diverse contemporary art practices in Iran today.
Samira Alborzkouh’s subversive realist images of women wearing crash helmets engage with gender politics, such as acid attacks. She was articulate about her work, consciously using the glossy look not just to make a point about visibility and the visual but also as a means for infiltrating into Iranian galleries where hyperrealism was acceptable but politics is not.
Manuchehr Gholami’s gouches are examples of the Negargari style while Saied Khazaie has patched past representations into a mismatch in his work “The royal juggernaut.” Yousef Abdinejad’s “Ghassal” (Baptism) is surreal and whimsical while Tina Bateni’s pop art like painting, “Nanotechnology” and her ‘Head to Toe’ portraits are socio-political comments on the wider world.
Sahar Eftekharzadeh’s “No.11” is part of a series of images on the multi-generational chain of motherood while the abstract made for this show by
Artists:
Samira Alborzkouh, Yousef Abdinejad, Karim Allahkhani, Bahareh Aref, Diana Valarezo, Tawab Safi, Salam Djaaz, Saeid Khazaie, Maryam Iravani, Tina Bateni, Claudette van De Rakt, Larissa Oksman, Manuchehr Gholami, Taha Hamed, Maryam Tavakoli, Hero Sheykholeslam, Atefeh Mohammadpour, Sanaz Ahmadi Ashestani, Zahara Sajadifar, Narges Adilipour, Mona Jafarnejad, Sahar Eftekharzadeh, Azam Eisazadeh, Nazanin Nabavi, Farnaz Karimi, Saba Soleymani, Hamed Heidari, Mehdi Noori, Afshin Bagheri, Amir Mansour Almaloo, Elmira Amirazodi, Morteza Mottaghi, Maryam Khorami, Marzieh Nazemzadeh, Leila Banki, Shadi Pahlavani.