Intersection for the Arts: One Day: A Collective Narrative of Tehran

Featuring the work of eight artists living in Tehran, Iran – Nima Alizadeh, Saba Alizadeh, Mohammad Ghazali, Ghazaleh Hedayat, Abbas Kowsari, Mehran Mohajer, Neda Razavipour, and Homayoun Sirizi – alongside new work by San Francisco- based artist Taraneh Hemami, this exhibition compiles a collective narrative of everyday Tehran, the largest city in the Middle East and the 16th most populated city in the world with close to 8 million residents. Representing the current unpredictability of each day in Tehran and also the hope that comes from imagining a better future, the artists chronicle narratives of place and time, demystifying life in a country that has been misunderstood and maligned for decades.

In 2007, Taraneh Hemami began working on One Day: A Collective Narrative of Tehran with participating artist Ghazaleh Hedayat, who graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005 and whom Hemami collaborated with in the past, to identify a group of artists in Tehran to engage with their immediate environment by responding to the mundane and the ordinary through observations of people, objects, and rituals. One Day: A Collective Narrative of Tehran is a natural progression for Hemami, who for years has organized and directed a number of collective, collaborative projects with the Bay Area Iranian American community (CrossConnections, Theory of Survival) in addition to her own studio practice. Chronicling narratives of place and time, the collective of artists in Tehran began to examine the relationship between the patterns, rhythms, and systems that emerged from their everyday experiences in Tehran within the larger social and cultural context of the city. For over a year, Hemami and Hedayat maintained regular communications and held meetings with the collective of artists in Tehran to both form and inform the work for the One Day: A Collective Narrative of Tehran project.

However, no one could have predicted the recent turn of events in Iran preceding and following the Presidential elections this summer. The title One Day: A Collective Narrative of Tehran represents the current unpredictability of each day in Tehran and also the hope that comes from imagining a better future. Although the context for this exhibition has shifted dramatically since the elections in Iran (including issues of freedom of expression, technology's influence on communication and mobilization, citizen disappearances), the artists in the exhibition have embraced the unexpected change and present recent and new work exploring the many layers of contemporary life in Tehran through photography, video, drawings, and sound.

Location

More Information

Other

Links

In The News

Artists are often found on the front lines of social change, translating and interpreting a rapidly evolving world. Such has been the case with the recent upheaval in Iran, where protests on the streets after the contested presidential election gave way to a government crack-down on political protest and freedom of expression. But in spite of that repression, some Iranian artists' voices are being heard beyond the country's borders.

Between these lines, each artist looks to the rhythms of quotidian Tehran, finding a common, de-mystifying humanity in the city's everyday existence.

[Hemami's] sharp, aesthetically gorgeous social commentaries are well complemented by the work of her colleagues, and further illuminate life in a country so physically distant but constantly present in our news.

Reviews

A new group art show in San Francisco aims to change perceptions by celebrating the mundane and ordinary in the Islamic Republic.

In the wake of June's protests, the show feels less diaristic than historic. "One Day" shows a collection of work by young Tehranians who use the humble tools of the documentarian - photography, video, audio, maps - to convey larger symbolic truths.

Life in Tehran means several different things certainly, and I think in the West, it's common to polarize the possible meanings based on obvious stereotypes and newswire-fueled assumptions. It's easy that way. But when you approach a collection of modern art from Tehran, in which the artists are responding surely to an aggressively political and religious society but also attempting to reveal another richer layer in the story, then a more complex intellectual tension surfaces.

Videos

The many lived realities of Tehran - the largest city in the Middle East, where the political climate is everchanging - can now be seen in the Mission District. The exhibit, One Day: A Collective Narrative of Tehran, will be showing at Intersection for the Arts through Jan. 23, 2010.

One Day: A Collective Narrative of Tehran