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Manuel Passaro 

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DANDYISM………..Plate 723.

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Instagram: @ninauc

More posts like this here ♥

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In what ways are art and commodity connected? Do you want your work to be a commodity? Can it be? What does art as a commodity mean in a globalizing world?

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fearless leader

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moving arrangements, 2016 Hannah Azar Strauss

Interview with Hannah Azar Strauss in progress - look forward to that in the next week or so!

Stay with us as we prepare for our participation in MONTREAL MONOCHROME IV - STUDY HALL at ARTICULE April 21-23

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From what part of your story comes your politic?

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Jorden & David Doody

2016

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Naghmeh Sharifi (studio shots)

Montréal, 2016

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An Interview w// Nagmeh Sharifi

Naghmeh Sharifi interviewed by tyson john atkings, Feb 9 - Feb 16, 2016

T: Good morning! Let’s get right to it - After your most recent show at the Montreal Council for the Arts, I have noticed a significant shift in your artistic project. What are some of your main concerns at the moment? What ideas are you exploring or playing with?

N: Good morning to you too. Yes, there has definitely been a shift and it usually happens in my practice upon completing one body of work but in this case it might be partially due to having started my MFA recently. I see this more as a time for experimenting with not just different ideas but the medium of paint and surfaces as well. Prior to this I also worked from imagination a lot but my obsession with the image took precedence over more formalist issues. Now I am working towards finding solutions to successfully combine all different elements of my artworks so that they are experienced more as a whole and are less hierarchical. I am allowing myself to take more risks and make more mistakes and create work for myself. In the past I have experimented with stop-motion animation in a group setting and I would like to go back to that and also work with video to express some of my ideas. In terms of themes I am becoming more and more interested in the idea of non-places, self-invented fairytales and fables and the notion of ‘fear of the unknown’ that is a common characteristic in the majority of them.

T: I can see these ideas in your work and the paintings and some of your other work make me think of dreams as much as I think of fables. The works contain an obscured politic, like a fable or fairytale. They are also like dreams, the content becomes memetic, floating, obscured, but also re-organized. It seems to me a way to negotiate some very different realities. Would you agree with that?

N: من با قصه‌های زیادی بزرگ شدم که مثل هر قصه ای‌ تحتِ تاثیر زمان و مکان و سنت‌هایِ متفاوتِ اون زمان خلق شده بودند ولی‌ وقتی‌ کار می‌کنم صرفاً از ذهنم تصاویری میگیرم که میشه گفت عاری از تاثیراتِ دنیایِ بیرون نیست. رویاها چیز‌هایی‌ هستند که ما کنترلی روشون ندارین و خیلی‌ اوقات پراکنده و بدونِ مسیرِ خاصی‌ هستند ولی‌ قصهٔ‌ها معمولا جهت دار و هدفمند بوجود میان. من دوست دارم با فضای خاکستری بینِ قصه و کابوس بازی کنم، مبنی بر اینکه چقدر المان‌هایی‌ که باهم ترکیب می‌کنم می‌تونن در صلح یا در جنگ باهم زندگی‌ کنند

Yes in a way. Though we do not have control over our dreams and in a way anything can happen without a specific pattern or leading to a conclusion. A fable however is invented and often wishes to teach a lesson so it takes on the characteristics and politics of the time and place in which it was created. I am working strictly from imagination but what comes out of my subconscious is not void of personal and external influences. I guess I am mostly interested in the idea of depicting an in-between place where different elements and situations that would not coexist in reality somehow try to make it work. It is that grey-zone between a fairytale and a nightmare depending on how jarring or harmonious the collage of these elements turns out to be. I hope I have answered your question.

T: What is it about painting that attracts you to that medium? Do you feel painting is inadequate in some ways?

N: For me painting is a way of creating a utopia, an alternate reality. It is the medium I feel most comfortable with expressing myself and creating depth on a two-dimensional surface. The only time I feel painting is not enough is in showing transformations and movement and that is following an experience I had with stop-motion animation. I really like the idea of animating a painting or an object to make it look like a painting in a state of constant metamorphosis. Having said that I still think it’s a matter of personal preference and not an inadequacy of the medium.  There are certainly many great paintings in which you can see movement, transformation and time captured beautifully.

T: This shifting space and your interest in dreams, utopias and stories seem important to an interpretation of your work. It is an aspect of your work that could be interpreted as an attempt to escape from reality, but I would tend not to see it that way. Do you see it this way? What about politics? Are you a political person? Do you think politics has a place in your work?

N: I don’t see it so much as a escape from reality as it is a way of creating alternate realities. Even if what I am working with are completely imagined settings, our subconscious is always affected by external factors and stimuli. I do not consider myself a political person relative to some of the other artists I know, I think the themes I deal with even if their initial inspirations are sometimes region-specific are explored in a more neutral tone. And then there is the argument that where I come from life and politics are extremely intertwined and sometimes inseparable which almost causes an aversion in me to create political artworks. Despite all this I can not say that I am completely apolitical. It is not that I am disinterested in politics, I simply do not wish to correspond to expectations of me as an artist from a certain geographical region to make highly politically charged artworks.

It also depends on how you define politics. I read a quote by Wim Wenders that said "The most political decision you make is where you direct people's eyes. In other words, what you show people, day in and day out, is political.” in this sense I guess we are all political.

من به تصویر کشیدن فضاهای خیالی رو فرار از واقعیت نمی‌دونم چون واقعیت یک چیزِ مشخص و ثابتی نیست و واقعیت‌های مختلفی‌ وجود داره که ممکن واقعیتِ ما نباشه در یک زمانِ خاص. از طرفِ دیگر خیلی‌ از این تصاویر ذهنی‌ هستند ولی‌ خیالِ ما همیشه از فاکتور‌هایِ بیرونی تاثیر میگیره. بیشتر دوست دارم به این دید نگاه کنم که با مفهومِ واقعیت به عنوانِ یک شکل ثابت و تعریف شده برای یه فرهنگ و جای خاص بازی می‌کنم. خودم رو سیاسی نمی‌دونم ولی‌ سیاست تا جایی‌ که وارد زندگی‌ هامون میشه رو کارمون هم بی‌ تاثیر نیست.

T: I am looking forward to seeing your work develop & change. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Naghmeh.

N: Thanks for taking the time and asking such refreshing questions Tyson!

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Image propagation; digital materiality; non-linear film-making; documentary fiction; radical indeterminacy

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paraglyph II tyson john atkings

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UstNBrmJFc)

Contemporary art and media strategy / power politics