ARBITRARY LINES / خطوط خودساخته

ARBITRARY LINES II: Sara Abbasnejad | Anahita Hekmat | Jaleh Nesari | Negar Yaghmaeian

December 16 - January 11, 2021

Curated by Amirali Ghasemi

OPENING December 16
Artist Talk online (via zoom)

The second part of the exhibition has invited four artists - Sara Abbasnejad, Negar Yaghmaeian, Anahita Hekmat, and Jaleh Nesari.

Their visual poetry and peculiar observations utter a range of concerns:

Daily life and the delicate line between childhood and adolescence, displayed through a gender-aware lens of Sara Abbasnejad.

Intimate/mind space emerges in the space between the home and its greenhouse for Anahita Hekmat’s video combining the past of the present and the imagined future of the past.

The geographical boundaries that once were crucial for human growth and are now changing at an unbelievable pace. Local cross-border shipping that had always cast its shadows on human mobility and survival from one generation to another, is now at stake as a result of the large ocean-going vessels. Negar Yaghmaeian’s The Smell of Earth and Tree gathers photographs, maps, and other treasured possessions to reimagine these stories, many of which remain untold.

Rendered via found footage under the #earthsound hashtag, Jaleh Nesari’s piece on the future of the blue planet appears more and more frightening as its residents are getting aware of their imposed irreversible manipulations, while their so-called environmental activism often contradict with their lifestyle.

The drawn lines -growing and fading, coming near and moving away- have turned into personal, organic, entertaining and frightening imagery: Rare traces which are captured in frames.

ARBITRARY LINES 1: Nebras Hoveizavi | Sanaz Sohrabi | Sona Safaei Sooreh

October 29, - December 12, 2020

Curated by Amirali Ghasemi

ARTIST TALK 6pm online (via zoom)

"Arbitrary Lines"

is a project by Parking Video Library and New Media Society - Tehran, which features seven lens-based artists who live around the globe. Their unique approaches and research-based practices, one by one, question the role of mass media and its representations of the ‘other’. Also, the silent process of marginalization via micro/macro narratives where the boundaries of intimate stories and personal spaces blur with the manifestations of the socio- political landscape.

Using various resources from print media, found-footage and testimonials in public archives, to collages and 3D models inspired by advertisements, their multifaceted perspectives reflect the fragmented realities and fables, simultaneously. Most importantly, their cameras boldly capture the abstract and elusive lines of segregation & its normalization. Hence, the ambiguity within those imageries allow them to bypass the cycles of nostalgia and reveal the vulnerability of any state at the same time.

Installation views

Arbitrary Lines I

Arbitrary Lines II

Photos: Jakob Lindner