Milan image art fair 2023
Roya Khadjavi Projects brings together the works of 5 female Iranian photographers. Tahmineh Monzavi and Bibi Manavi's photographs are based on a documentary engagement that intertwine social consciousness and the environmental landscapes of Iran while Maryam Palizgir and Sepideh Salehi's photo collages challenge the taboos related to women sexuality, as well as issues they face with political and social freedom. Monzavi's focus is above all on women, Manavi's on transformation of land in Iran. Salehi mixes intuitive photography and collage processes with a conceptual practice rooted in emotions and memories. The concepts of covering up, hiding, and privacy manifest as layered collages. With Claustrophobia, Palizgir in an amalgam of the protuberant naked body parts with unconventional materials and brick walls she articulates fear, anxiety, grief, loss, and inequality in the contemporary moment.
Featured artists:
Bibi Manavi
Tahmineh Monzavi
Maryam Palizgir
Sepideh Salehi
Negin Mahzoun
Dates: Wednesday 22 - Sunday 26 March 2023
Place: Superstudio Maxi
Via Moncucco, 35
20142 Milan
VIP Preview
Wednesday 22 March (Invite Only)
Public Opening Hours
Thursday 23 March
12 – 9pm
Friday 24 March
12 – 9pm
Saturday 25 March
11am – 8pm
Sunday 26 March
11am – 8pm
For Sales and Press Please Contact:
Roya Khadjavi: roya.khadjavi@gmail.com
Press Release
Bibi Manavi received her BA in fine arts from Central Saints Martins in London where she has exhibited her work numerous times since 2013. She exhibited her works in Paris at Jardin D’s Artois 2016 and Galerie Nikki Dianna Marquardt 2010. Bibi’s work can be found in several private collections in France, UK, and Iran. Bibi’s Aesthetic is inspired by an itinerant existence between Iran and Europe. Her work embodies a reflection on the cultural diversity of globalized world. Bibi’s interdisciplinary practice spreads across still and moving images, sculptures and drawing. She investigates the relationships between her different environment focusing on geometrics; Ancient Persian architectures become the patters of today’s visual culture.Bibi Manavi’s sculptural and photographic series investigates the role of memory through the magnifying glass of dendrochronology in the time of ecological mutation: transformation of land, water diversion, deforestation. The sculptural panels draw from Iran’s mirror mosaic craft with biomorphic design at its core. Annual rings, microscopic cellular compositions taken from specific tree samples are enlarged but in varying scales and then recreated - each individual cell is represented by an individual mirror. These installations have a relationship with their surroundings, how one experiences these pieces is directly affected by their placement. The photographic research institute of the panels captures the transformation of actual space into perpetual field mechanisms. Patterns form and dissolve, through a whirlwind of lights and reflections, underlying a festival of cellular connections. inside and outside dissolve into a liminal space. the space where memory takes shape.
Tahmineh Monzavi, born in 1988 in Tehran, is a socially conscious photographer. She began her professional career as a documentary photographer in 2005. In her professional life, with collection of photographs and her harmonious approach to her environment and her time, Tahmineh created her own style to capture and explore in the fields of Artistic and Documentary photography, with honesty and fearlessness.
Maryam Palizgir is a NYC based artist whose practice is an amalgam of subject matter process study and material manipulation of forms in space. She scans spatial Perspective in urban/rural architectures as a way of identifying and predicting forms in space and the interconnectedness of various spaces with human presence. To her, the “process” of making is as important as the final piece. She works in a variety of mediums and her process involves deconstructing and reconstructing an image, object, or matter through material manipulation. She intends to focus on the complexity of space by scenography of constructed space that allows her to investigate through forms, light, color, reflection, and refractions. Through her Minimalist abstraction language, Palizgir blurs the boundaries between photography, painting, and architecture. Her visual language draws from the urban/rural landscape as well as geometric patterns from traditional Islamic art and architecture by exploring the ways we exchange knowledge, and how perception widens our perspective, and how observation deepens our understanding of the reality in which we live. She challenges viewers’ perceptions and seeks works of art that activate once the viewer is involved.
Sepideh Salehi is a multidisciplinary artist born in Tehran. She left Iran to attend Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, Italy, where she received her MFA in Visual Art and Multimedia. Salehi works in various media and utilizes different processes, including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, and other media. She weaves personal narrative and post-1979 Tehran cultural history into her work, reflecting on how she, and other women, navigated the shifting social and political landscapes. Some of the venues for her shows include, an exhibition of Iranian women artists titled A Bridge Between You and Everything curated by Shirin Neshat at High Line Nine, NYC, Photo London, Somerset House London, Mirrored Re-Collection at the University of Maryland Stamp Gallery, REVEAL at The Space by Advocartsy LA, Patterning curated by Samantha Friedman at Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY, STRAPPA Rogue Space Chelsea NY, Craft, and Folk Art Museum LA, Tribeca Video Art NY, Centre for Contemporary Art Luigi Pecci, Virgiliano Museum and International Bologna Art Fair Italy. Salehi has been on a panel discussion with Shirin Neshat, Middle East Institute, and had talks at the University of Maryland, Loyola University, Pyramid Atlantic Center, and others. She currently lives and works between Washington DC and New York.
Negin Mahzoun was born in Tehran, Iran, and works in Manhattan, NY. Her artistic practice focuses on observation, memory, and gender in the context of her personal experiences and cultural identity through the women's body as an object and subject with the perspective of self-portraiture and layers of history and literature. She expressed her work through various media and materials such as sculpture, installation, painting, printmaking, and photography. She works primarily with canvas, treads, paper, and water-based pigments to create a specific space for sharing existing life experiences for women apart from assumptions and oppressive laws governed by society. She received her BFA in Graphic Design from Elm o Farhang University in Tehran and her MFA in Studio Art from the City College of New York. Her works have been presented in many groups, solo exhibitions, international festivals, and biennials.