Grasping fragments, or otherwise calculating distance includes the work of four artists—Nassem Navab, Bahareh Khoshooee, Mahsa Biglow, and Sareh Imani—who employ photography, video, performance, and installation to investigate issues surrounding women’s rights in Iran, diasporic experience, censorship, technology, war, and dislocation of the self. Employing techniques such as distortion, glitch, layering, splitting, and hybridity, their work speaks to the particular qualities of new media art, as well as the ways in which digital technology can both bridge and intensify these distances. In this exhibition, the politics of such distances—geographical, cultural, bodily, and linguistic—are ever-present, as each artist considers the actions and implications that arise when one is made to move between cultures, languages, media, and landscapes.
Grasping fragments, or otherwise calculating distance is organized by Celia Shaheen, BFA/BA candidate in Studio Art and Art History, with Center Space Project.
This exhibition is supported by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at The University of Texas at Austin, the College of Fine Arts, the Fine Arts Diversity Committee's Student Project Grant, and by 29 individual donors who contributed to a HornRaiser campaign in fall 2019.
Bios
Mahsa Biglow (b. 1990, Tehran, Iran) earned her BFA in 2013 and an MFA from Rutgers University in 2019. She has been a part of exhibitions, screenings, and projects in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Tehran, Iran, and Warsaw, Poland, and is a 2019 recipient of the Nadine Goldsmith Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center. Along with her upcoming residency at the Vermont Studio Center, Biglow was a 2019 artist-in-residence at the Goggle Works Center for the Arts in Reading, Pennsylvania. She is a freelance writer and a contributor to Kaarnamaa Art Magazine.
Sareh Imani (b. 1986, Shiraz, Iran) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Imani received a BSc in Industrial Engineering from the Sharif University of Technology (2009), a MFA in Painting from the University of Tehran (2013), and a MFA from the Parsons School of Design (2018). She has exhibited her work at High Line Nine, New York (2019); 601 Art Space, New York (2019), Nasty Women, New Haven, Connecticut (2019); and Grid-space Gallery, New York (2019), amongst others. She has held residencies at the Bronx Museum of the Arts (2019), MASS MoCA (2018), and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2018). Imani is currently the artist-in-residence at A.I.R. Gallery in New York.
Bahareh Khoshooee (b. 1991, Tehran) received her BA in Industrial Design from the University of Tehran (2014) and MFA in Studio Art from the University of South Florida in Tampa (2017). Khoshooee has presented her work at the Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando (2018); NADA MIAMI 2018; Elsewhere, New York (2018); Housing, New York (2018); and Rawson Projects, New York (2017). She has been included in group exhibitions at C24 Gallery,New York (2018; Museum of Photography, Stockholm (2018); 2018 Taiwan Annual, Taipei); Fajr International Film Festival 2018, Tehran; and the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg (2017). Her work has been featured in The Huffington Post, The Guardian, Artnet News, Vice, The Metro, and The Creators Project. Khoshooee has participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Art and Painting (2018); Triangle (2018); Ox-Bow (2017); and ACRE Residency (2016). She is currently in residence at Baxter St Camera Club New York.
Nassem Navab (b. 1991, Los Angeles) is a new media artist currently based in San Diego, California. She received a BA in Interdisciplinary Computing Arts and Media from the University of California, San Diego in 2014 and an MFA in Photography, Video, and Imaging at the University of Arizona in 2019. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the University of Arizona, Tucson (2019); Harry Wood Gallery at Arizona State University, Tempe (2016-17) and CFA Downtown Studio, Albuquerque (2018). Recent group exhibitions include the San Diego Art Institute (2019); Art Produce Gallery, San Diego (2019); Yun Gee Park Gallery, Tucson (2019) and the Museum of Contemporary Arts, Tucson (2019).