EXHIBITION AT MOTTAHEDAN PROJECTS GALLERY (May 12- 31, 2015) ‘Caught in the Game’: Neda Zarfsaz and Golnar Adili

Neda Zarfsaz

'Chichast' a series by artist Neda Zarfsaz derives its title from the ancient name for Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran. Translated as ‘glittering’, Chichast references to the lake’s salt deposits. For centuries, the lake has played a role in the Iranian consciousness as it weaves through myths and legends and its shore-side mud is attributed with healing powers. In recent years, drought and over-irrigation have caused depletion of the lake’s waters, threatening its wildlife. In this series, which depicts photographs of the artist dumping bottomless buckets of water into the lake in attempt to reverse that trend as well as landscape photographs displayed in glass boxes containing salt, Zarfsaz appears as an individual confronted with realities larger than herself. As she futilely attempts to resuscitate life, the artist’s initiative calls for human responsibility to the environment and other species in the global community. The salt-filled cases, which configure the works as hourglasses, maintain the immediacy of time and the pressures of acting against the clock—i.e., before death overtakes life.

The force of these works lies in their conceptual simplicity: they are just as they are staged. In a return to premodern concerns, the works suggest the priority of object over form as the material (water)—not its presentation—constitutes the works’ primary meaning. Collapsing art and action, Zarfsaz’s performances combine works of art with the less romantic work of physical labour and fulfilling a duty.

Neda Zarfsaz / Chichast series; Everything is upside down, 2012 © Neda Zarfsaz, 20x40x17 cm, 5 pieces, ed. of 3 and artist’s proof | Lambda print on Fujifilm archival silk paper and Mirror / Coutesy of the Artist and Mottahedan Projects Gallery

Neda Zarfsaz / Chichast series; Everything is upside down, 2012 © Neda Zarfsaz, 20x40x17 cm, 5 pieces, ed. of 3 and artist’s proof | Lambda print on Fujifilm archival silk paper and Mirror / Coutesy of the Artist and Mottahedan Projects Gallery

Zarfsaz’s other series, 'The Notion of Reason', presents the value of assiduity and persistence. In the images, Zarfsaz performs a children’s game played in Iran in which girls repeatedly thread a string through the skin or their palms until one child’s thread breaks and she loses. Inspiring visceral reactions, the game seems like a masochistic endeavor, even though, in actuality, the artist experiences no pain the string is in fact only threaded to the outermost, nerveless layer of skin. Thus, the piece opens a conversation about the oppressive condition of women but optimistically concludes that the individual may nonetheless ‘win’ at a game in which she finds herself caught, subject to rules she had no hand in writing.

Neda Zarfsaz / The notion of reason no. II, 2011 © Neda Zarfsaz, 30x45x4 cm, each of 8 unique pieces, Lambda print on Fujifilm archival paper, Needle, Thread / Coutesy of the Artist and Mottahedan Projects Gallery

Golnar Adili

'Photo Based', a series of abstracted photographs by artist Golnar Adili are inspired by her trip to Tehran, Iran to study the contrast between inside and outside spaces of the city. The final document was titled; Tehran, a Landscape of Compressed Freedoms. Adili uses Art as her key to understanding the current underlying of her identity and the world through fragmentation, abstraction, and repetition. She works in different mediums and processes which involve deconstructing and reconstructing an image or object through cutting, folding and material manipulation. In the works presented, Adili plays with time as she rearranges the consecutively taken photos and intermixes them. These extrusions create different levels of abstraction mimicking digital processes while being highly hand crafted exploring new distortions and blurring the lines between design, craft and fine art.

Golnar Adili / 1+2+3 study, three photographs hand-cut and mixed, 2011 / Coutesy of the Artist and Mottahedan Projects Gallery

Golnar Adili / 4+5+6+7 study, three photographs hand-cut and mixed, 2011 / Coutesy of the Artist and Mottahedan Projects Gallery

Golnar Adili / 8+9 study, three photographs hand-cut and mixed, 2011, 20x60 cm / Coutesy of the Artist and Mottahedan Projects Gallery

Mottahedan Projects Gallery

Mottahedan Projects (MP) is a commercial project space specializing in exhibiting and promoting international contemporary art. Featuring emerging and established artists, MP exhibits curated group shows as well as special projects by individual artists presented in the form of solo shows. Revising the traditional gallery approach, MP alleviates short-term commercial concerns by underwriting costs such as production and guaranteeing the purchase of the works exhibited. The project space aims to broaden the world stage for contemporary art as it places works in private collections and acts as a liaison between international galleries and museums in a rapidly growing region.

Situated in Dubai, a city that is itself a product of globalization and one characterized by the porousness of national borders that defines modern life, MP helps artists realize their creative visions and ambitions, by offering them residencies taking advantage of specialized workshops in Al Qouz industrial area. Its curatorial vision includes cultivating a visual dynamism unafraid of tension, encouraging the viewer to question the role that art plays in socio-political and cultural arenas. MP operates as an accessible space in which art appreciators might seize the opportunity to engage with great works by renowned artists from the 1980s to today as well as emerging artists still early in their careers.