a woman is worth a thousand questions.
Alternative Media from Iran

Mon Oct 27 |8:30 pm|
Tuesday, Oct 28 |8:30 pm|

Jack H. Skirball Series
Admission:  $11 [members $8]

Presented as part of the LA/Islam Arts Initiative led by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

The citywide LA/Islam Art Initiative arrives at REDCAT with two evenings of powerful, eye-opening works that deconstruct and recontextualize women’s complex relationship with Islam in Iranian culture and society. Running the gamut from experimental film to video and performance art, from animation to documentary, the featured projects draw special attention to the ways in which women and women’s bodies are posited both within Islam and at its border, with the codes of sexual propriety, veiling and separation functioning as signifiers of a condition fraught with contradiction and hope.

The evening of Monday, October 27 will be devoted to experimental media, with a video performance by photographer Haleh Anvari, an installation and documentation of a public performance by multi-media artist Jinoos Taghizadeh, an experimental animation by Pooya Razi, witty, poignant, and visually compelling vignettes by Samira Eskandarfar and Nassrin Nasser and body art by Nikoo Tarkhani. On Tuesday, October 28, three documentaries focusing on the bodies of women and their representation will be shown: two shorter pieces by Samira Eskandarfar and Firouzeh Khorosvani and Loghman Khaledi’s award-winning Nessa (2011).

In-person: Haleh Anvari, schedule permitting

http://www.redcat.org/event/woman-worth-thousand-questions

This program is also part of REDCAT’s ongoing Jack H. Skirball Series curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud.

Launching this fall, the Los Angeles / Islam Arts Initiative (LA/IAI) brings together nearly 30 cultural institutions throughout Los Angeles to tell various stories of traditional and contemporary art from multiple Islamic regions and their significant global diasporas. LA/IAI is the first-of-its-kind, wide-scale citywide initiative on Islamic arts producing and presenting programmings such as art exhibitions, panels, discussions, and performances.

“Middle Eastern artists do not need heroes. They are tired of sacred portraits and they actively tear them down. They despise halos of sacredness be it based on religious, historical or political ideologies – even if they are based on traditional or modern artistic concepts.” – Jinoos Taghizadeh

If there is a thread that runs through [contemporary Iranian video works], it’s their self-conscious fragility as carriers of meaning. They invoke collectivity only to underscore its absence, and they hint at a historical narrative only to shrug off any shared ideals of progress. – Bidoun

About REDCAT
REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) is located at 631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012 – in downtown Los Angeles at the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets, inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Parking is available in the Walt Disney Concert Hall parking structure and in adjacent lots.

 ‘THE FOLD’
ABSENCE, DISAPPEARANCE AND LOSS OF MEMORY IN WORKS OF 12 IRANIAN ARTISTS

AHMAD AALI, REZA ABDOH, CHOHREH FEYZDJOU, PARASTOU FOROUHAR, BARBAD GOLSHIRI, ARASH HANAEI, BAKTASH  SARANG JAVANBAKHT, MANI MANZINANI, SHIRIN SABAHI, MONIR SHAHROUDY FARMANFARMAIAN, KAMRAN SHIRDEL, HOMAYOUN SIRIZI.

The CAB is delighted to announce its new exhibition, ‘The Fold’, curated by Michel Dewilde and Azar Mahmoudian, which explores motifs such as absence, disappearance, amnesia and the importance of memory set against the background of modern and contemporary Iran.
Inspired by the French Philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s work ‘Le Pli’ (1988), the curators choose the fold as the leitmotif for the exhibition. The exhibition makes use of the concept of the fold in a variety of modalities including the psychological, historical and political levels.
The fold simultaneously combines the idea of an action as well as a covering. It can be opened or closed: it unfolds itself to the world or can fold up into itself. The fold can also imply the passing of time – it can suggest memory or the loss of it – the interval where time is suspended, while its cracks or fissures refer to the unseen dimensions. The term can open up a different understanding of one’s relationship to oneself, a world where the internal and external or past and present cannot be easily located.
The exhibition ‘The Fold’, favours an intergenerational approach, confronting different aesthetic positions, spanning four decades of art in Iran. Beginning in the 1960’s modernist era, the show combines internationally renowned artists such as Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian who started her career at a time of an imposed modernism, with others who were living abroad or in exile and emerged in the 80s and early 90s such as Chohreh Feyzdjou and Reza Abdoh.  These artists are put together with exponents of the most recent generations such as Shirin Sabahi or Mani Manzinani. The exhibition combines existing art works with site-specific creations by Parastou Forouhar, Homayoun Sirizi and Arash Hanaei.

Michel Dewilde is a curator and art historian based in Ghent (B).
He curated exhibitions for the MSK & SMAK museums (Ghent), the Art foundation Gynaika (Antwerp), the CC Bruges and worked freelance. Since 1996 he has initiated several projects with Iranian artists such as: Chohreh Feyzdjou, Shadi Ghadirian, BitaFayyazi, Neda Razavipour, SiminKeramati, Khosrow Hassanzadeh, Shirin Sabahi, Sona Safaei, Baktash Sarang Javanbakht, etc.

Azar Mahmoudian is a freelance art critic and curator based in Tehran and London. She was the recipient of the Chevening scholarship and graduated with an M.A. from Goldsmiths in 2009. Her research interests are mainly focused on transcultural circulations and the politics of display. In 2010 she co-curated the archive and documentary series portion of “Iran and co” at Burges, Belgium, which engaged with international representations of Iranian contemporary art. She has collaborated with Tehran based project spaces and works as a researcher, associate editor and university lecturer.

CAB Contemporary Art
www.cab.be
Rue Borrens 32-34  – 1050 Brussels

19 April – 15 June 2013

Opening : Thursday 18.04.2013, 6 – 10pm
Exhibition : 19.04.2013 – 15.06.2013
Open: Thursday, Friday and Saturday : 2 – 6pm
Information : For more information please contact Eleonore de Sadeleer
eleonore.desadeleer@cab.be
+32 477 88 39 46