Art Brief IV:
Iranian Contemporary San Francisco

ADVOCARTSY is proud to collaborate with Moms Against Poverty (MAP) as its official community and fundraising partner for this event.  This collaboration will bring about Northern California’s support of the Iranian art community as we fundraise for MAP’s important and inspiring mission.  MAP is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2008 by a group of individuals, who believe that, every child deserves a chance to thrive in this world regardless of where they are born.  [www.momsagainstpoverty.org].  MAP is collaborating with Advocartsy to help build a bridge between art and charity, where art serves a charitable cause and charity supports Iranian artists.

Ten percent (10%) of net sales during this event will be donated to MAP.

ART BRIEF IV: IRANIAN CONTEMPORARY SAN FRANCISCO explores the diverse ways artists of Iranian background in diaspora create and define ‘Iranian Contemporary Art’.  The works exhibited speak to the various artistic reactions and reflections to the realities of identity formation in diaspora, the pain and joy of exile, the call of nostalgia, and the fragmentation of the self.  

Advocartsy invites you to meet the artists who participated in the exhibition:

Pouya Afshar

Pouya Afshar is a multi-disciplinary artist and alumnus from the California Institute of Arts Character Animation department and is a graduate of University of California Los Angeles Graduate Department of Film and Television focusing in Animation and Digital Media. He has exhibited his work as an animator and visual artist throughout Los Angeles and United States at renowned locations such as Harold M. Williams Auditorium at the Getty Center, Bovard Auditorium at University of Southern California, Royce Hall at University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Santa Monica Art studios, 18th street Art Center, and numerous galleries and art fairs around the world. He is also the recipient of a Create Economy Grant in the state of Massachusetts.  He is currently an assistant professor of art and Design at University of Massachusetts, Lowell. (Boston)

Afsoon

Afsoon works with her own collection of vintage images to create illustrious collages. Through a combination of techniques, Afsoon’s rich, and often playful, works reflect the merging of East and West, allowing the audience to find the familiar and foreign. Afsoon’s works have been extensively exhibited and can be found worldwide in prominent collections and museums, including the British Museum, Los Angeles County Museum and Berger/YSL Collection, among others. (London)

Samira Akbari

Samira Akbari has a bachelors degree in sculpture and MFA from Academy of Art in San Francisco University for an MFA Program. Her work often explores the experience of women and the human condition.  (San Francisco)

Ali Dadgar

Ali Dadgar is an experimental artist working across performance, image, text and object based media. Dadgar holds an MFA in Art Practice from UC Berkeley and a BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts.  His work explores personal and shared experiences of alienation, loss and duality often in playful and varied forms of expression. (San Francisco/Bay Area)

Taraneh Hemmami

Taraneh Hemami engages in diverse strategies including installation, object and media productions, collective and participatory projects as well as curation to explore themes of displacement, preservation, and representation. Her projects transform materials of history, archives of images and information into timelines, patterns and maps that draws connections between contradictory narratives. She received a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Painting & Drawing from the University of Oregon, Eugene (1982) and a Master of Fine Arts in Painting (Distinction) from the California College of the Arts, Oakland, California (1991). She lives in San Francisco, and exhibits, lectures, teaches and curates internationally.  (San Francisco)

Kevah Irani

Kevah Irani works in painting, collage, sculpture, and sound installation. Creating dynamic, mixed media artworks, Kevah examines the concepts of identity, diaspora, and topophilia.  Imbuing objects with significance of their origins, he brings disparate things together in ways that explore how they do and do not resonate with one another. Kaveh received his Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts from Emily Carr University and his Masters Degree from California College of the Arts. (San Francisco)

Aida Izadpanah

Aida Izadpanah possesses a diverse repertoire of media and styles, having worked for many years in acrylic, oil, mixed media, watercolor, photography, and porcelain. She specializes in European styles, ethnic Persian motifs, and modern designs, as well as dynamically textured abstract works. Her large scale abstract textured-field paintings are deeply associated with the passage of time and therefore, inevitably. (New York City)

Shahram Karimi

Shahram Karimi’s paintings portray the dilemma of the contemporary bicultural Iranian who seeks his historical and personal identity by wedding his personal past with contemporary form. Each one of Karimi’s paintings relates a fragment of his memories and national history, each a piece of his personal past. Karimi exhibits his works internationally, and is a curator and art critic.  (New York)

Simin Keramati

Simin Keramati is a multidisciplinary artist working with social-political themes presented through painting, drawing, video art and new media.  She received her Master of Fine Arts from Tehran Art University and is the Winner of the Grand Prize from the Khaka International Biennial 2004. Her paintings often address themes of identity, diasporic experience, and social issues.  (Toronto)

Dana Nehdaran

Dana Nehdaran studied painting in Iran and recently migrated to New York. Nehdaran’s portraits captivatingly capture the nostalgia and historical past, seamlessly connecting the past to contemporary culture.  He uses abstraction to highlight the ways in which past and present weave together in both conflict and harmony. (New York City)

Dariush Nehdaran

Dariush Nehdaran’s photography captures intimate moments suspended in time. He aims to turn spectators into participants, drawing them into contemporary Persian culture. His photographs and video works are available both in public and private collections worldwide including the Armando Reverón Contemporary Art Museum in Caracas-Venezuela 2018, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in the US 2016, and the Salsali Private Museum in Dubai-UAE 2012. (San Francisco)

Ardalan Payvar

Ardalan Payvar draws inspiration from deconstructive typography and works to incorporate elements of its composition into his abstract, calligraphic works. Fragmenting traditional and contemporary type, Ardalan finds ways to balance and fuse them together without sabotaging the integrity of either realm, combining formal studies in Graphic Design, Fine Art, Persian Calligraphy and his artistic intuition. (Berkeley)

Bahar Sabzevari

Bahar Sabzevari is an Iranian artist exploring identity through self-portraiture, narrative painting and video art. In her most recent series of self-portraits, she questions the Iranians’ tendency and obsession to praise the past. She received her MFA in painting at the New York Academy of Art in 2018 and she has been the recipient of the Central Academy of Fine Arts Residency in Beijing, China summer of 2017. (New York City)

Sepideh Salehi

Sepideh Salehi works in various mediums utilizes different processes ranging from painting, drawing to printmaking, photography, video art and animation. Her works revolve around the poetics of the veil as well as stories from her country of origin.  Her work has been exhibited and showcased internationally.  (Washington D.C. and New York City)

Hadi Salehi

Hadi Salehi is a master of the art of analog photography.  Salehi’s images capture diverse portraits that are nostalgic, powerful and soft, leaving a haunting quality that lingers in the psyche. He seeks to create a collective awareness and be a cultural messenger through his images. His career now spans almost 40 years and has closely photographed cultural innovators like Keith Haring.  He is a graduate of Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. (Los Angeles)

Rebecca Setarah

Rebecca Setareh has garnered international attention for her Sculpture work, harmoniously integrating rock and bronze. Her work examines the experience, strength of the female experience in a creative process that represents the struggle of life itself.  (Los Angeles)

Shilla Shakoori

Shilla Shakoori’s  diverse artistic expression springs from an exploration of the synthesis between native and adopted cultures. Shakoori’s works are strongly influenced by Iranian philosophy and myth.  Her work often reflects a meditative process of cutting, sewing and incorporating language and forms. (Los Angeles)

Kamran Taherimoghadam

Kamran Taherimoghaddam is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work illustrates social and political stories. His paintings and videos have been exhibited in museums,

galleries and art fairs in Iran, Italy, France and USA. (Washington D.C. and New York City)

Taravat Talepasand

Taravat Talepasand’s interdisciplinary practices draw on realism to bring focus to an acceptable beauty, exploring its relationship with art history under the guise of traditional Persian painting.

Her interest is in painting the present, which is intrinsically linked to the past, making it easily understood by the Iranian and indicative of assumption for the Westerner. She is currently the Department Chair of Painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is in permanent collections of the De Young Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Orange County Museum of Art, Orange County. Taravat was included in the 2018 Bay Area Now 8 at the Yerba Buena Center of the Arts and the recipient of the 2010 Diebenkorn Fellowship at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Shadi Yousefian

Shadi Yousefian’s 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. Shadi’s work engages personal and social issues of contemporary life, particularly, cultural identity and the immigrant experience. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collection of The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

Farnaz Zabetian

Farnaz Zabetian paints manifestations of daily life, exploring the struggles of Eastern women as they are forced to navigate social taboos and ideals since birth. Her symbolic and expressive portraits of these women depict their private thoughts and yearnings, as well as their perceived relationship with the rapidly modernizing world. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including Sondouzi Art Museum of Tehran in 2008; the Saad Abad Museum of Tehran in 2009; and the Peninsula Museum of Art in Burlingame in 2017.

Avideh Zahedi

Avideh Zahedi’s sculptures translate two-dimensional drawing techniques into three-dimensional figures, working to extract information from the expressed emotion and movement of her subjects and use them to represent inward states of being. (San Francisco)

ART BRIEF IV:  IRANIAN CONTEMPORARY SAN FRANCISCO

Sat. Dec. 1, 2018  6 -10pm

Sun. Dec. 2, 2018, 1- 5pm

AT SOMARTS Cultural Center

934 Brannan St. (between 8th and 9th)

San Francisco, CA 94103

ABOUT:

MAP’s mission is to nurture and educate underprivileged children to their fullest potential, so that, one day, they can contribute and lead within their own communities; thus breaking the cycle of poverty. MAP is dedicated to serving underprivileged children in Iran, the U.S and around the world.  MAP has long strived to bring awareness to artists from Iran and other countries to the community while promoting its cause of serving children in need.

ADVOCARTSY is a collaborative visual arts platform with the mission elevate awareness and engagement amongst artists, collectors, and the fine art community, with focus on Iranian contemporary art.

ADVOCARTSY’s ART BRIEF series provide a concentrated opportunity to introduce artists of Iranian heritage to the Iranian community and the community at large.  The first three ART BRIEF initiatives where held in Los Angeles. ADVOCARTSY is now extending its efforts to Northern California. The ART BRIEF series is designed to build community and to build bridges between communities, but also to demonstrate the breadth of expression and meaning characterizing the art of Iranian-American artists.

Momsagainstpoverty.org

Advocartsy.com