Painting (Painting)

This untitled painting by Tirdad Hasemi presents a space that can be thought of as both a prison cell and a house. Paradoxically, in both cases the color and the importance of the walls give a feeling of confinement. Escaping from prison in Iran and finding the walls of a home in Europe has been a complex and conflicting experience for Hashemi.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

The Blue Poisoning series , reveals the outcome of artist Tirdad Hashemi’s weary and depressed days in the winter of 2022, following their second migration from Paris to Berlin. The color blue expresses the feelings of sadness and loneliness felt by the artist in the frozen Berlin cold. In the drawing, lonely and tormented bodies seem to struggle to live; despite their suffering, they still hope.

Photography (Photography)

Shahab Fotouhi’s photographic series Establishing Shot; Interior, Night – Exterior, Day; without Antagonist and Extra consists of four C-prints that at first glance would appear to be travel posters for Iran, in that each features a beautifully shot image of an Iranian waterfall. Upon closer inspection, one will find the superimposition over the photographs of a script that looks like code. The text is actually a transcription of a political debate that occurred between two 2009 Iranian presidential campaign candidates, but with all the words removed, leaving only the punctuation.