Sanahin Babajanians

Opening on 21st July 2023
On view until 11th August 2023

Artists:
Mehdi Farhadian, Nasim Davari, Fatemeh Bahman Siyahmard, Koosha Moossavi, Maryam Farshad, Shaqayeq Ahmadian, Hamed Sahihi, Sara Tavana, Shahryar Gharaei, Maryam Farzadian, Marjian Hoshiar, Sanahin Babajanians, Sara Assareh, Shahrzad Argahinejad, Siamak Nasr, Leila Nouraei

The exhibition aims to bring together a divergent set of works. Representing, but also upsetting, the relationship between the artists and their connection to reality. Spheres that contain paradoxes and manage to juxtapose the ideal with the unattainable.
Breaking away from the harsh realities is a Persian Tradition manifested in our literature and arts, even in our timeless tradition of humor. The tough realism of every day is compensated by stepping into another dimension, cherishing illusions that replace the real world.
Here are exaggerated floating spaces – a placeless place- yet in connection with the spaces that remain outside them. Within these spaces, we are alive, free of borders and restrictions, away from the mundane, and separated from the gloom that engulfs our land. Able to float in an archipelago of plurality, as we are supposed to.
Nazila Noebashari

Opening on 24th February 2023
On View until 17th March 2023

Artists:
Farhad Ahrarnia, Shaqayeq Ahmadian, Sara Assareh, Samira Eskandarfar, Mohamad Eskandari, Ebrahim Eskandari, Reihaneh Afzalian, Sanahin Babajanians, Fatemeh Bahman Siyahmard, Dadbeh Bassir,Parisa Taghipour, Sara Tavana, Manijeh Hejazi, Parisa Hejazi, Sara Hosseini, Zari Hosseini, Hamid Hemayatian, Anahita Darabbeigi, Nasim Davari, Raoof Dashti, Navid Salajegheh, Sara Soleimani Qashqayi,Amir Hossein Shahnazi, Hamed Sahihi, Nastaran Safaei, Bahar Samadi, Kiarang Alaei, Maryam Farzadian, Mayram Farshad, Mehdi Farhadian, Naghmeh Ghassemlou, Amirali Ghasemi, Narges Mohamadian, Shirin Mellatgohar,Koosha Moossavi, Parsoua Mahtash, Elmira Mirmiran, Allahyar Najafi, Siamak Nasr, Nazgol Nayeri, Leila Nouraei, Mohammad Hamzeh, Marjan Hoshiar.

Don’t be sad, my land!
I have planted flower seeds in your wounds
One day there will be flower everywhere…
Alireza Roushan

For Women, For Life, For Freedom

It is through artistic creations that Iran reveals her true self and this many believe constitutes her most precious legacy. The Persian legacy has endured many turbulences of history. No historical shock has been able to break the chain. There were interruptions, yet they always permitted even provoked a resumption of creativity; ideas, styles, techniques forcefully imposed, were accepted and integrated in to our existing practice. The Iranian spirit is a tenacious one, we can endure extremes and at the same time our thousands of years of history teaches us to remain optimistic and persistent.
Throughout the last forty-four years of our perpetual revolution, the visual artists have had to carve their independence; in the first years the universities were purged through the so-called Cultural Revolution and artists and professors had to look for other jobs or start private classes. Many left the country. Although it was a difficult struggle, but they succeeded in achieving autonomy from a Regime that controls the distribution of our national wealth and would never support progressive arts. This resilient attitude which is now adapted by the younger generations, was very important in the recent difficult times where despite pressures and the fears, the visual arts has stood its ground and has been an outspoken and integral part of the structure of our brave civil society.
Our artists continue to consciously challenge the status quo and the peripheral environment as well as themselves. They insist on their sense of independence and persist in their capabilities like all other modern human beings. They help preserve a Persian legacy, enriching our lives and inspiring us as a nation to become better than we are. It is this perseverance and humility that is the source of the merit of Iranian arts and its limitless potential.
We are constantly reminded of our legendry bird: The Phoenix who is believed to possess the knowledge of all times, from ashes she rises to create wonderment, she plunges in to flames to be purified , to rise again, every time stronger, every time mightier.
Nazila Noebashari

Opening on 5th November 2021
On view until 19th November 2021

Diaspora as a phenomenon has engaged many nations for many centuries, whether in its compulsory and often violent kind or the voluntary type. One of the most important effects of it is multiculturalism which leads people to try and find a personal path and their own explanation of and for the society they live in. This exhibition is entirely about personal experiences shaped by my exploration and probing into the status quo and finding a platform, a foothold, in a smaller society shaped by the dominant one. And in this exploration, what can be more important than maintaining individuality?
Being called a minority creates a feeling of disengagement, not belonging, and being in between. I use art as a tool to create something else from my own duality.
In the first part of this exhibition, symbols of Iranian and Armenian architecture come together to show the inseparable mixture of these two cultures. An integration that is evident in arts and design and poetry and literature.
In a constant fluctuation of different concepts and elements, we create definitions that may only last for one moment. A moment after that, a new narrative or definition is formed. We cover those concepts with new descriptions to better understand us and to introduce ourselves more easily. In this constant endeavor- that happens every second and moment- the dualities that are part of my life release energies and forces similar to explosions from within. This is the price I pay to better understand speed, time, and space, in an ever-changing world that surrounds us. A world of signs filled with indicators of history, identity, and ethnicity, a world that eventually will carry all of us to the future.
In this iteration, there is a process of creating, covering, and rebuilding. The covering is not about the insignificance of things or ideas but an attempt to build something new, new foundations that can only belong to me.
Sanahin Babajanians