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Sarah Tavana

Solo exhibition of Sarah Tavana

Opening on 29th September 2023
On view until 13th October 2023

In her interpretation of the book Kappa by Japanese Author Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Sarah Tavana brings these mythical Japanese creatures into the real world. Kappas are humanoid in form, amphibious, and sustained by water held in an indented bowl on the top of their head. The Story is about Patient 23, hiking in Kamikochi when he spots a kappa. He gives chase and tumbles down a hole into Kappaland. Religion, morality, justice, economics, and death are all examined in his sojourn into this strange land. When the patient eventually returns to the human world, he becomes disgusted by humanity and, like Gulliver, is locked away, his truth-telling being considered “madness.”
In highly sophisticated and totally handmade sculptures of Sarah Tavana, she, in fact, draws on aspects of our own world. Mirroring elements of our own society, she presents imagery – a world- that, though eerily familiar, is much more worrisome than our own—a world where children do not want to be born.
In the artist’s wild imagination, a Circus is where she places performing characters, and their busyness serves to underscore the fact that nothing will happen to change their existence. There is no plot, and it appears all characters are moving in a circular timelessness. Creatures that are tramps, clowns, and trapezists all engaged in an unending absurdity and, much like animals in real circuses, are controlled through fear and physical abuse.

Group Exhibition

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

End of Year Group Exhibition

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

To see more of this exhibition, please follow us on Instagram: @aarangallerytehran

Address: Neauphle Le Chateau, Lolagar St. No 5.
Tel: +98 21 66702233
We are open Wednesdays and Thursdays 1-6 pm.
For opening day and Fridays: 4-8 pm

Group Exhibition

Opening on 4th March 2022
On view until 1st April 2022

Manijeh Armin- Tajsar Jafari- Marjan Hoshiar- Koosha Moossavi- Arezoo Shahdadi- Shahrzad Araghinejad- Mehdi Farhadian- Allahyar Najafi- Parsoua Mahtash- Mohammad Eskandari- Nastaran Safaei- Parisa Taghipour- Mahya Giv- Maryam Farshad- Sara Tavana- Rene Saheb- Manijeh And Parisa Hejazi- Salé Sharifi

A Flower Blossoms for its Own Joy.
Oscar wilde

We celebrate the arrival of the Iranian New Year and a New Century by showcasing works of artists whose practice is mostly influenced by nature. On this occasion, it is fitting to quote an Ode to A Garden Carpet – By an unknown Sufi Poet (Circa 1500):
Here in this carpet lives an ever-lovely spring, un-scorched by summer’s ardent flame, safe too from autumn’s boisterous gales, Mid winter’s cruel ice and snow, ‘Tis gaily blooming still. Eyes hot-seared by desert glare find healing in its velvet shade. Splashing foundations and rippling pools in cool retreats, sore-wearied limbs restore, and tired hearts awaken with joy. The way was cruel.
Baffled by monotony and mocked by phantoms, delirious, beset by stalking death in guises manifold; The dreaded jinns, the beasts ferocious, the flaming heat and the exploding storms; from all these perils here at last set free; in the Garden all find security.
Here the long-laboring Earth, at last, gives birth. From apparent death, a new and lovely world is born; the jacinth imprisoned lies below the desert’s dusty floor. The stony wilderness is so bleak and bare, in ageless patience broods, aware of life within, the promise of fertility and abundance. Ever longing for deliverance. The world, at last, reveals its destiny.
Can we not then capture and restore The loveliness that gave us hope, still brightly mirrored on memory’s gliding waters or snared in the poets’ invisible net, so wide, so fragile, yet captor and conqueror of realities elusive?
Wrought in gold and azure, bright as carved metal. Dream-like foliage in sparking tones is caught, or else, in sumptuous shades of glossy lacquer, quiet but intense; in muffled browns and honey pure, Jasper cool and mellow cinnabar, that fairyland comes real again.
In sudden collisions, find sweet embrace; in rhythms enchanting, with stately pace, rollicking speed; emerging, retreating, reversing, in peaceful finality. Their conflicts reconcile, all in confederation blending like a chorus in part-song gladly singing, In contrapuntal play rejoicing, floating soft or wildly free, yet anchored in eternity.

Solo Exhibition of Sara Tavana

Opening on 3rd September 2021
On view until 17th September 2021

Characters of Sara Tavana are caught in situations where they seem confined in a metafictional whimsy, trapped in a story whose outcome has already been written. Characters circling in their own progressions are menaced by some force they can’t understand.
Artist refuses to accept the complex human condition as it is, in all its labyrinth-like layers. In response, she creates a solution; dismissing reality and fully embracing the absurdity and complexity of the situation. Through this acceptance, the artist liberates herself; there is no tragedy and no easy solutions, but there is relief once you start to laugh. The happiness from the contempt is all the greater.
These crippled hybrids are ‘non-knowers’ and ‘non-can-ers’; nevertheless, they want to be part of the circle of life, to participate in its cycle, to wear clothes and shoes and to partake in the feast, and ultimately to receive approval. For this enthusiastic half-human, half-non-human being, the absurdity of the situation is by itself a situation.
The objective is to create havens where the soul can take refuge from the chaos and ugliness to float in the strength of humanity’s unbounded imagination. The artist handcrafts and paints every single piece in the series, and her meticulous attention to detail and the magnificence of colors, are a denial of the ugliness that we are encircled within our daily lives. The strength of these forms and their balance are evidence of the maturity of an artist who, by staring at darkness, promises relief and strength to persevere.
Nazila Noebashari