Life and Lines (2008)
An intermedia project for IRUS art Intercultural Collaborative project, curated by Morehshin Allahyari
in collaboration with Paris Mahtash (Photography), and Shabnam Khoshdel (performance)
This project is a five-piece mixed media, has exhibited in:
2009 Andenken Gallery in Denver
2010 The Co-Prosperity Sphere gallery in Chicago
This project is about the interface between tradition and modernity in a modern Middle Eastern woman's life, its ontology, the paradox she experiences during her lifetime. The struggle she has between keeping up the values that society/family expects from her as a decent woman, and her ambitions as an independent human being.
It is about the dialogue she will have with herself all her life, questioning those values, trying to do her best dance in the box that social norms have limited her in, hoping for a bigger space, pushing those boundaries with more moves and finally she actually might get more space! more freedom of movement and choice.
But the interesting part is, that we still might keep the best parts of our culture that we choose or the parts that are comforting too, or basic to us, and carry them with us to our new life/ personality; then it is not an outside boundary to us anymore, they become a part of us, feed us with our cultural history/ our roots. We are not offended by them anymore, because we have chosen them, we have decided to keep them and we are aware of the effects they have on us.
These are our roots and without them, we would be lost souls. they grow inside us, blossom out as a part of us, making what we become. what we decided to be.
*IRUS art was an intercultural collaborative art project between the artists in Iran and the U.S. Morehshin Allayhari was the co-founder, organizer, and one of the artists of the project. For one year, 9 artists in Denver and 11 artists in Tehran, established collaborative projects.
We were not only developing art but also participating in a functional dialogue with each other as artists and individuals (and not necessarily “nations”). A combination of painting, video art, drawings, photographs, software, street art, and design was featured in Denver at the Andenken Gallery in the spring of 2009. A selected version of this show was featured at the Co-Prosperity Sphere gallery in Chicago, January 2010.
For more information please check: http://www.morehshin.com/irus-art-project/
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