Vintage Modern
ADVOCARTSY’s Summer 2024 group exhibition, VINTAGE MODERN, explores the diverse ways in which contemporary artists of Iranian origin frame and examine the past through the lens of the present. Iran’s complex sociopolitical, mythological, and art-historical traditions are recalled, reinterpreted and reclaimed via a wide range of creative expressions. Each of the represented artists conjures up the past in their own manner – be it through theme, technique, imagery, style, material, and/or subject matter – and dispatches it to speak in their own voice. Placed in a modern context, the past is not only invoked but interrogated and illuminated in new and unexpected ways.
Whether they are referencing elements of Qajar painting (as do Barrangi & Abbasy) or portraying historical personages (as do Afshar & Afsoon), each artist brings their distinct perspective to this process; Vintage Modern showcases these disparate voices while also highlighting how they remain organically in dialogue with each other. Ultimately the exhibition speaks to the way memory works and how a shared cultural history can be processed and iterated in myriad ways. Larger themes like the elasticity of time and the mechanics of remembering also emerge, indicating a congruity of experience that transcends nationality and approaches the universal.
Samira Abbassy was born in Ahwaz, Iran in 1965 and moved to London, UK as a child. After graduating from Canterbury College of Art, she began showing in London then moved to New York in 1998. Her work has been included in shows at the Metropolitan and the British Museum and is in private and public collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum, British Museum, the British Government Art Collection, the Grey Art Gallery at NYU, the Burger Collection, the Donald Rubin collection (Rubin Museum, NY), the Los Angeles County Museum and the Afkhami Collection.
Pouya Afshar is an alumnus of the California Institute of Arts and a graduate of the University of California Los Angeles Graduate Department of Film and Television focusing on Animation and Digital Media. He has exhibited his work as a visual artist throughout the United States and the Middle East, including Harold M. Williams Auditorium at the Getty Center, Bovard Auditorium at the University of Southern California, Royce Hall at the University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Santa Monica Art Studios, 18th street Art Center, Craft Contemporary Museum.
A self-taught artist, Afsoon spent her childhood in Iran and youth in California before settling in London in 1988. Working across mediums including photography, linocut, collage and etching, Afsoon’s practice aims to preserve her cultural past and explore nostalgia through visual storytelling and iconography. Her art reveals the introspective and often difficult nature of being a woman artist in the Iranian diaspora, contending with historical allusions and the artist’s own carefully crafted, playful visual language. Afsoon has exhibited internationally, and her works are held in the collections of LACMA, the British Museum, the Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent Collection, and the Farjam Collection amongst others.
Mohammad Barrangi was born in Rasht, Iran, in 1988 and is now based in the UK. Born without full mobility in his left arm, Barrangi has developed a unique artistic practice that utilizes his right hand and both feet to create his distinctive works. Blending traditional calligraphy with experimental mark-making techniques, Barrangi combines elements of Persian calligraphy, storytelling, text, and touches of humor to create intimate works on handmade paper, canvases and murals. Barrangi holds a degree from the Islamic Azad University of Tonekabon and graduated from the Royal Drawing School in London. His works have been acquired by the permanent collections of the British Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Royal Family Collection, the National Government Collection in the UK, the San Diego Museum of Art in the USA, the Cluj-Napoka Art Museum, Romania as well as Leeds Art Gallery, UK, amongst others.
Kourosh Beigpour is an LA-based award-winning graphic artist and type designer. He received his BFA in 2003 from the Tehran University of Art, which is one of Asia’s oldest and most prestigious art schools, and received an MFA in International Contemporary Art and Design from Limkokwing University in 2011. Beigpour’s use of typography and graphic design has been published in more than twenty countries around the globe. Beigpour has designed for a wide range of clientele, including Google, The Broad, The J. Paul Getty Museum, University of California Irvine (UCI), University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU), Oklahoma State University (OSU), Canada Type, Powerhouse Museum, DoppelHouse Press, and The Samuel Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture, and had work acquired by LACMA in 2023.
Over several decades, Oakland-based multimedia artist Ali Dadgar has explored universal themes of censorship, colonization, ‘otherness’, and identity filtered through his own Iranian and American experiences. Working across multiple mediums and series simultaneously, Dadgar’s ideas take shape through performance and 2-dimensional mixed media art. Dadgar (b. 1962) received his BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, in 1989 followed by an MFA in Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007. His work has been placed in prominent private and public collections, including the University of California Berkeley Morrison Library.
Living and working in German exile since the 1990s, themes like the violation of Human Rights and the oppression of women are of major concern for the artist and activist Parastou Forouhar, who employs a powerful feminist language in her art. Her work blurs the boundaries between form and concept, biography and artistry. With artistic techniques such as installation, graphic print or performative photography, Fourouhar engages with the positionality of the female body, and how diversity and ambivalence shape the meaning and ownership of the space in relation to gender, ethnicity and migration. Her work has been widely exhibited around the world and is included in prestigious permanent collections, including The Queensland Art Museum, the British Museum, Belvedere in Vienna, the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt, the Deutsche Bank Art Collection and the Walker Art Center.
Sara Soliemani Ghashghai
Sara Soleimani Qashqayi grew up in Iran. The nomadic lifestyle Ghashghai witnessed as a child hardly exists anymore and the collapse of this culture has left a deep mark on the artist’s psyche. In response she began a path of discovery by studying the artistic imagery and legacy connected to Iranian nomads, alongside her academic career. She studied Conservation of Historical Artifacts & Restoration at Bahonar University of Kerman and Master’s in Beaux-Arts from Tehran Azad University. She incorporates her own narratives on the rich tapestry that she creates using the technique and knowhow of lady artisans of Kerman province. Juxtaposing the old and the new, the artist shows her concerns, fears and hopes.
For the past five decades Nahid Hagigat (b. 1943) has dedicated her work to political and social commentary and is regarded as one of Iran’s most important feminist artists of her generation. After graduating in Fine Arts from Tehran University she continued her education in NYU in the sixties with a focus on etching which became core to her practice at the time and received her Ph.D. from New York University in Art and Art Education, specializing in painting and printmaking. She often exhibited her art in Tehran prior to the revolution and was instrumental in introducing printmaking to Tehran art galleries. Her work is included in major public and private collections such the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The British Museum, Tehran Museum of Modern Art, JP Morgan-Chase, New York University, and World Bank in Washington, D.C., among others.
Tahmineh Jahanbakht
Born in Iran and growing up in Isfahan till age 16, Tahmineh Jahanbakht is a Los Angeles based multi-disciplinary artist who dedicates her art to the exploration of identity, memory, and cultural heritage. Javanbakht is the co-founder of Artecnica, a Los Angeles-based design firm whose designs have been included in collections at MOMA-NY, LACMA, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to name a few and has taught experimental painting at her alma mater, the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. She has exhibited worldwide.
Born in Isfahan, Iran, Mobina Nouri currently lives and works in San Francisco, USA. Mobina Nouri is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice reflects her personal history as a female immigrant who left Iran to live in the UK and later the US. Working across a variety of media, the artist mines her country’s tradition of storytelling, often turning to Persia’s literature, philosophies, and mysticism to contemplate and reconsider the complexities she bears witness to in the contemporary moment. Nouri received her BA in Performance Art and MA in Product Design from the Fine Art Faculty of Tehran University, Iran, and her Ph.D. in Creativity Science from City University London, UK. Nouri has exhibited her work internationally.
Hadi Salehi is a master of the art of analog photography. Salehi’s images capture diverse portraits that are powerful and soft, leaving a haunting quality that lingers in the psyche. Salehi seeks to create a collective awareness as a cultural messenger through his images, revealing quiet truths through his process-intensive works. With a career that spans more than 40 years, Salehi has closely documented cultural innovators such as Keith Haring, as well as developed an expansive body of analog, digital, film, and mixed media works. Hadi Salehi is a graduate of Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, and currently resides in Los Angeles.
Multi-disciplinary artist Delbar Shahbaz works across painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, and video. Of central concern to her practice is the negotiation of gender identity, transformation, and emancipation as well as human connection to the natural realm. Delbar engages with self-identity as fluid, socially constructed, and multifaceted. Delbar received her MFA from Art University in Tehran, Iran in 2008. She went on to pursue a career as a professional artist and educator before migrating to the USA in 2013. Delbar received her second MFA from the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, CA; she has been working as a part-time faculty member there since 2016. Delbar has exhibited as a solo artist and in group shows extensively internationally.
Foroozan Shirghani, born in Iran (1981), is a multidisciplinary artist who received her BFA from Tehran Azad Art University in 2004 and her MFA from Alzahra University in 2008. She served as a lecturer and art instructor at the Share Rey Azad university and Shariati University in Tehran between 2008 to 2015. Shirghani works across mediums, including painting, drawing, ceramic sculptures, abstract video, and textiles. Her work has been featured in over sixty exhibitions worldwide and featured in numerous publications.
Shadi Yousefian is an artist whose mixed media work reflects and addresses issues that touch on universal themes such as loss, dislocation, alienation, and reinvention. She received both her Bachelor’s (2003) and Master’s (2006) of Fine Arts in photography from San Francisco State University. Her work engages personal and social issues of contemporary life, particularly cultural identity and the immigrant experience. Shadi has been the recipient of several awards including the Best of Photography Award at the 13th Annual Stillwell Show, The International Photo Awards (IPA 2004 and 2005), The Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship in the Fine Arts, and the International Photography Competition (Latitude Life). Her work has also been acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the San Diego Museum of Art.