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JOSEPH ARZOUMANOV-DHEDIN: The Handcrafted Treasure of Dreams

JOSEPH ARZOUMANOV-DHEDIN: The Handcrafted Treasure of Dreams

Born in 2002, Joseph Arzoumanov-Dhedin is a jeweler and embroiderer whose work bridges craftsmanship and contemporary art. After prestigious residencies and training periods in India, Armenia, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and at the Villa Albertine in the United States, Joseph has emerged as one of the most promising talents of the French art scene.

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Photo © Anahita Vessier

Joseph never forgets his dreams.


Each one occupies a vital place in his imagination. Charged with emotion, they inspire and guide his artistic journey.
It all began with a childhood dream — a radiant sun appearing before him. Beyond any symbolic reading, this sun became his personal emblem, now resting around his neck as a marvelous pendant of his own making.

Photo © Anahita Vessier

During his first year at École Duperré, Joseph began exploring a multiplicity of mediums. Embroidery, he says, became his gateway into sculpture. Thread by thread, he was led to the realm of goldsmithing through a decisive encounter with a jeweler who would become his mentor.

Manteau de sacre - Photo © Joseph Arzoumanov-Dhedin

His singular practice gave rise to an extraordinary vision that he sums up with poetic precision:

“I am in pursuit of a treasure — the kind a child would dream of finding — and since I cannot discover it myself, I create it by digging into the earth.”

Through this act of creation, Joseph fulfills both his childhood desire to become a “treasure hunter” (an archaeologist) and his artistic necessity.

The Pharaonic Parure - Photo © Li Cam Vega

Gold, diamonds, rubies, emeralds… today Joseph swears only by the noblest of materials. Between goldsmithing and jewelry, his creations weave enchanting narratives. Every figure he sculpts or scene he embroiders is born from a dream. From The Violinist to The Storyteller, Joseph invites us into a oneiric world as surprising as it is original — a universe without boundaries, shaped by his global experiences: sculpting in Armenia, weaving in India and the Emirates, embroidering in Uzbekistan, and coding in the United States.

Photo © Anahita Vessier

This openness to the world is deeply rooted in his family history. Raised in a Franco-Russian household, Joseph grew up celebrating the dialogue between these two cultures. Descended from Jewish and Armenian exile, he finds strength in this plural heritage. For a time, he lived with his parents in Morocco, where he also drew new references and inspirations.

When asked about his greatest treasure, he immediately mentions his Mausoleum — a six-meter-high installation that fuses sculpture and embroidery. For Joseph, it is “the perfect blend of Morocco, Russia, and France.”

Le Mausolée - Photo © Pauline Verdié

Now in his fourth year at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, Joseph reflects on his approach to making:

“At the Beaux-Arts, craftsmanship is almost a dirty word. Yet I firmly believe that even in the simplest embroidery, there’s an incredible randomness that gives the work its emotional depth.”

And when faced with the perennial question — Art or Craft? — he replies, with a smile:

“I’m an artist… but honestly, I don’t care.”

For Joseph, who moves freely between master jewelers, weavers, embroiderers, and art professors, the distinction is meaningless — a debate not worth having.

Photo © Anahita Vessier

The future looks bright for this young artist. His residencies, commissions, and exhibitions multiply. As his first film is about to premiere, a second is already being written, alongside an ambitious virtual reality project.

Following his Villa Albertine residency in 2024, Joseph developed a surreal chessboard where each piece is played by a robotic arm he designed in collaboration with researchers at M.I.T. This new treasure is soon to be unveiled — to be continued.

Credits:
Cover photo  (Home) : Anahita Vessier
Text : Raphaël Levy

Darius Dolatyari Dolatdoust’s instagram

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DARIUS DOLATYARI DOLATDOUST: Reverie of Dreamed Memories

DARIUS DOLATYARI DOLATDOUST: Reverie of Dreamed Memories

Darius Dolatyari Dolatdoust is an artist, performer, choreographer, and designer born in France, with Iranian heritage. For as long as he can remember, he has carried in his mind the stories his father told him about his native Iran—or perhaps more accurately, the silences his father left behind. As Darius himself puts it, it is “the classic tale of an exiled immigrant erasing the memory of his past.”

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Photo © Simon Verjus

“O wind, if you pass tdhrough the garden of my homeland, bring me a breath of its fragrance.” — Hafez of Shiraz (14th-century Iranian poet)

For as long as he can remember, Darius has carried in his mind the stories his father told him about his native Iran—or perhaps more accurately, the silences his father left behind. As Darius himself puts it, it is “the classic tale of an exiled immigrant erasing the memory of his past.”

Born through his father’s eyes, the fantasy of a dreamt Iran awakened in Darius a longing to connect with the homeland he feels is part of him. Yet for Darius, visiting Iran is impossible. There, he faces the risk of military service—and death penalty—due to his homosexuality.

Photo © Hubert Crabières

Trapped in France, 6,000 kilometers from the object of his longing, he turned to the Persian department at the Louvre Museum to discover himself about Iran: “For me, it was the only connection I had to Iranian culture.”

Wearing The Dead (2020) Photo © Darius Dolaytari Dolstdoust

This encounter inspired the performance Wearing the Dead (2020), in which Darius and other performers wear costumes inspired by Persian sculptures from the Louvre. Through this work, he examines his heritage and personal exploration, summarized in his words:

“The costume is a journey, a bridge between a culture I’ve inherited and one I fantasize about.”

Wearing the dead (2020) Photo © SImon Verjus

This was followed by the creation of a series of felt works within the installation Daddy’s Temple (2024), where the artist constructs scenes using archival images of his father and family—people Darius has never known. These pieces take the form of hybrid collages, drawing inspiration from his father’s archival photographs and his research into the architecture of Iranian cities his father once knew, such as Rasht and Tehran. For Darius, it was about “reconstructing false memories or perhaps his own [his father’s].”

Daddy's temple (2024) Photo © Darius Dolatyari Dolatdoust

From costumes to felt works, the artist’s fascination with the body, textiles, and fashion becomes apparent—a passion he cultivated during his time at École Duperré, where he learned sewing and garment-making. However, he quickly became disillusioned with the fashion world, both for its ethical treatment of objectified bodies and its ecological impact. This prompted him to shift his practice toward textile sculpture, eventually leading him to performance and choreography.

Dressing (2022) Photo © Romy Berger

The human form is not entirely forsaken. Darius develops another fantasy alongside the first: that of the male body. In positions of vulnerability, these bodies grapple in an ambiguity between struggle and intimacy, heightened by the ethereal quality of his felt technique.

Photo © Darius Dolatyari Dolatdoust

Beyond its materiality, dance breathes life into the costumes and into expression itself. Darius choreographs his works to unlock the embodied power of the costume. For him, “It’s not the precision of the movement that interests me, but how a movement can be interpreted, seen through time and space, and its resonances.”

Flags Parade (2022) Photo © Paul Rousteau

Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust, a multifaceted artist, works across media and formats, probing both the plasticity of the artwork and the malleability of narrative. While his practice appears introspective at first glance, it paints a portrait of universal humanity: the quest for identity, the fragility of memory, and the permeability between species.

Credits:
Cover photo  (Home) : Darius Dolatyari Dolatdoust
Text : Raphaël Levy

Darius Dolatyari Dolatdoust’s instagram

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MONA OREN, Wax Poetry

MONA OREN, Wax Poetry

Sculptor, wax artist, performer, painter—the words are insufficient to describe the practice of this artist, winner of the Liliane Bettencourt Prize pour l’Intelligence de la Main® in 2018 and recent resident of Villa Kujoyama.

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“Fair one, let’s see if the rose…”, this rose of Ronsard reminds us all of our mortality, a memento mori that reminds us that time passes. The flower is also the ephemeral that urges us to seize the day, and this, Mona Oren has understood and contemplated. Through archaeological discoveries, we know that wax survives and persists over time. It is this great resilience that guided Mona towards working with wax during her studies at the Beaux-Arts in Paris in the early 2000s.

Photo © Ivana Kalvacheva

From one flower to another, Mona Oren, with an almost demiurgic gesture, offers eternal life.

Whether it be irises, tulips, or pansies, they number in the thousands. Transformed, heightened, attenuated, the veracity of the model interests the artist little, for whom the inspiration of shapes and colors is spontaneous. From her wax, Mona sculpts and gives life to a field of eternal flowers whose apparent fragility and ephemerality contrast with their true durability and resistance.

Photo © Ivana Kalvacheva

From her lifelong idol, Georgia O’Keeffe, Mona Oren reflects on the corporeality and floral sensuality that wax perfectly captures, thanks to its ability to preserve the imprint in transparency and delicacy, but also its proximity to the skin.

“I found in flowers a possibility of transfiguration between the flower and the human.”

Anthropomorphic, these flowers represent us, each with its colors, its flaws, its scars…

These anthropomorphic still lifes aim to be “surprising” for the artist who wishes to “create still lifes that astonish.”

Photo © Ivana Kalvacheva

For Mona Oren, it is a long reflection on nature and especially on flowers that “have always been there” and coexist with an entire ecosystem. The environment and nature are an important part of the artist’s work, who has also realized several performances in situ between 2002 and 2021. Called the Dead Sea Project, this series of performances led by Mona Oren around the Dead Sea in Israel combines her wax work and her desire for nature. In Dead Sea (2002), the artist floats wax flowers in the sea, infusing life into this hostile yet vibrant environment, as these flowers “float in perpetual motion.”

For Cocoons I & II (2019), Mona built metal structures covered with wax that she submerged for two weeks in the Dead Sea. The result is crystallized salt cocoons, between natural process and the artist’s hand, a work of four hands that recalls the beauty of the world.

From Ronsard to post-land art, passing through Georgia O’Keeffe, Mona Oren questions wax, the body, nature, and herself. Her multifaceted productions all converge on a common ground, that of the relationship with oneself and the world.

Crédits:
Photo couverture (Home) : Ivana Kalvacheva
Texte : Raphaël Levy

Mona Oren site web

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FATIMAH HOSSAINI, Beauty in Exile

FATIMAH HOSSAINI, Beauty in Exile

September 2023
Pearl In The Oyster #10 © Fatimah Hossaini

To know you better, could you tell us about you and your first steps in photography? 

To know me is to understand where it all started. 

My grandparents fled from Afghanistan to Iran in 1918, during the Soviet war. My parents also grew up in Iran. Even though the new generations started in Iran I could not be an Iranian, You must have Iranian parents, it is blood-related.

Pear In The Oyster #5 © Fatimah Hossaini

When I was 14, I started going to painting classes. Art was serious for me but not in an academic way. I didn’t think it could change my life. When I started mathematics in school, my parents wanted me to be an engineer so I started engineering studies for 4 years: the worst years of my life. In the last year of my studies, I started photography classes. This medium allowed me to be faster than with painting and I thought that maybe it could get me the result I wanted. After those classes and so many struggles especially with my family, I got a scholarship at Tehran University. 

I started my second bachelor degree in photography. I was the failed engineer just starting photography from zero, it was a big deal for me and my family. I am the first child in a Middle Eastern family: Can you imagine? Then I was working in Iranian ateliers, I exhibited my work and I decided to go back to Afghanistan after my graduation.

Pearl In The Oyster #32 © Fatimah Hossaini

After my third time in Kabul, I decided to stay. I started teaching at Kabul University in the photography department. After the Afghanistan civil war, the level between the Kabul and Teheran universities was so different. I used to take books to Kabul from Tehran. At the same time, I established my organization Mastooraat Art Organization for Women and Art, the empowerment of women through art and photography. 

The concept of being a woman is so beautiful.

As it relates to your organization, we would like to discuss the importance of women’s issues in your life and work.

For me, it is really important because of the context I come from. When you see in Paris how women are decision-makers here, I’m only dreaming we could have the same one day in Afghanistan. Maybe in 100 years. The concept of being a woman is so beautiful. When I think about Afghanistan, it was always because of men. They started the wars, but the victims were always women. When a country never sees a peaceful situation, it’s always because of disrespectful behavior towards women.

When a country never sees a peaceful situation, it’s always because of disrespectful behavior toward women.

Pearl In The Oyster #11 © Fatimah Hossaini

When I was in Tehran, I didn’t have a clear image of women in Afghanistan so I started « Beauty and War », a photo project that I really wanted to do. My sister and my mum were the first Afghan women who I photographed. When I went to Afghanistan, I realized how much colorful and beautiful it is and how nobody talked about it. I think that sometimes images like photos are stronger than words, and it was for me a way to express my feelings.

In Kabul, I made real friendships that allowed me to ask these women to take their pictures. I think you have a very clear and honest perspective when a woman is in front of you. As an Afghan woman, I went through the same struggles as these women, hence I could understand them well. 

As an Afghan woman, I went through the same struggles as these women hence I could understand them well.

Pearl In The Oyster #8 © Fatimah Hossaini

How did you distance yourself from documentary photography or photojournalism? 

Some of my pictures are natural and spontaneous. My work is a mix of staged and unstaged photography.

I always had an imagination and a vision about the Kabul streets or the mountains. My work is not real but it also is. These women are real, these shops and textiles are real, everything is real. But when I was looking at these shops, these mountains, it was always women’s history and objects made by the hand of women I could see, even though all the shoppers were men. In Afghanistan, as a woman, my brother or husband would have to buy me the things I wanted. The women make the textile, the men buy it for the women. Taking pictures of women in front of shops is staged photography. This was all my artistic imagination.

It was real because of my artistic imagination, but not real, you couldn’t see women shopping in Kabul.

Pearl In The Oyster #18 © Fatimah Hossaini

How difficult is it to talk about the women’s issue in Afghanistan? 

After the Civil War, many things have been taken away from us in Afghanistan, even colorful and positive things about our heritage and history. When you see in my new project with beautiful textiles and jewelry, is about heritage pieces made by women. Women made the cultural heritage, it is also a women’s story. When they were posing in front of my camera, there was a shame, a result of a special code of behaving that I could find in Afghanistan. We have many restrictions from society. I come from a very religious and traditional background; so it’s still not easy for me to reveal myself in front of the camera. I’m still uncomfortable with my body.

Women made the cultural heritage, it is also a women’s story.

Fahima Mirzaee © Fatimah Hossaini

Afghanistan is a state of men. In my photo projects, I had many problems with the publication of these women’s photos, even with the process of talking with them. Standing in front of the camera is already really complicated for these women.

By telling the stories of these women, by telling untold stories, I can give them a voice. I think I am responsible for telling the stories that I captured with photography through my activism. Women’s life under the Taliban regime is quite, at least I captured those last years of little freedom.

By telling the stories of these women, by telling untold stories, I can give them a voice.

Pearl in the Oyster © Fatimah Hossaini

I have regrets, If I had more time and freedom I could have done more.

Why did you choose a portrait to represent women? What were the consequences? 

Portraits are more intimate, I want to give my perspective on women’s history. The identity of my models is women, not Pashtuns, Hazara, or Tadjik. Being a woman can be my identity, being Afghan can be my identity, and being Iranian in heart can be my identity. I mix these identities. In the series taken in  the Zahak mountains in Bamyan, a Hazara area, the model is Tadjik from Badakhshan wearing traditional Hazara clothes. The red of the textile is a response to the genocide of the Hazaras.

Being a woman can be my identity, being Afghan can be my identity, and being Iranian in heart can be my identity.

Pearl In The Oyster #4 © Fatimah Hossaini

In my work, you could see beautiful women in the streets but there is more to be told. Their stories are central because of the Afghanistan context. I was a minority, a Hazara, hence I was more of a target with my almond eyes. Ethnicities have problems with each other especially Pashtuns, they think Afghanistan is for them, Hazaras are Mongolians, and Tadjiks are from Tadjikistan. It is not an easy problem. I put a Hazara woman next to a Pashtun woman, I got so much hate from these photos. In the first look, you can’t get it, the true narration is deeper.

You are in exile, disconnected from your roots and identities, how do you create?

I started my photo project in 2015 in Teheran, unfortunately, it stayed unfinished after the fall of Kabul and I was forced to live in Afghanistan in an American military aircraft. It was a very sad journey because I couldn’t believe one day I would be forced to leave my country as my grandparents did. I’m continuing to work, I’ve got a scholarship from the French Ministry of Culture. In a war context, exile is an easy choice but it’s a very heavy burden to bear. 

In a war context, exile is an easy choice but it’s a very heavy burden to bear.

Pearl In The Oyster #28 © Fatimah Hossaini

I took five pictures of women in exile to complete my project. Women in exile have stories about beauty, resilience, hope, and femininity. I found a new way to tell my story and the one of others. You can even see that the color of my photos has changed, I couldn’t find the colors of Afghanistan.

I’m now struggling with this new way of life, even though I had many opportunities and met amazing people. Exil is sad. I was just crying in the streets the first months I got here. Now I want to change the narrative. At the end of the day, it’s still not home. 

At the end of the day, it’s still not home.

Are you always your model while in exile?

Yes, self-portraits. It is a big change for me. I did not make a lot of public self-portraits.

In my new series, I picture myself with Hazara gloves and a Hazara hat which was the only one I could take with me after the Kabul fall. I’m now my model. I find things here that take me back to Afghanistan, the small things. I find Afghanistan in my father’s music, his playlist. My last project is linked to a Hazara music played by my father. In my new series, I still can’t look at the camera.

I find things here that take me back to Afghanistan, the small things. I find Afghanistan in my father’s music, his playlist.

Next projects?

Now, I have zero connection with my main photo project, and that’s why I want to stop working with the Afghanistan concept. I will close it. I started new projects with central Asian women, in both Asia and MENA regions. It is still about telling the stories of heritage, roots, and connections. It will be a challenge. At the end of the day, it is the same as Afghan women but in another context. It is always women. 

Fatimah Hossaini is the winner of the Habib Sharifi Prize x Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 2023.

Credits:
Coverphoto (Home) : Fatimah Hossaini
Photos: Fatimah Hossaini
Text: Raphaël Levy
Fatimah Hossaini’s website

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JEANNE VICERIAL, From Margin to Center

JEANNE VICERIAL, From Margin to Center

March 2023

Between her soloshow at Templon and her presence at Lafayette Anticipations, this month of February was placed under the sign of Jeanne Vicerial and her black thread silhouettes. Following a shared moment with the artist at the beginning of February, it is a whole reflection that presents itself to you.

Credits : View of Jeanne Vicerial's solo exhibition: "ARMORS", 7 January - 11 March 2023, Galerie Templon, Paris.

How to characterize these shadowy mannequins, sometimes standing, sometimes lying?
The question is legitimate since Jeanne Vicerial is first of all a fashion designer by training. Are we in front of clothes that models would wear or in front of autonomous sculptures? Thin is the nuance as it was confirmed by the artist for whom the only limit is the “possibility for the sculptures to be invested by a body”. “A year ago”, she continues, “I was making clothing sculptures that were, for some, wearable: today at Templon, I made sculptures.” The body is both determining and constitutive of the work of the artist. 

Credits : View of Jeanne Vicerial's solo exhibition: "ARMORS", 7 January - 11 March 2023, Galerie Templon, Paris.

“This word of body is very equivocal” says Descartes for whom the term refers as much to the matter as to the soul. If we continue this thinking, the body is an empty vessel that one would come/wish to dress with meaning, it is as much a symbol as a tool.

With the exhibition Armors realized for the gallery Templon, Jeanne Vicerial “wanted to equip the body of women with an armor”. “The primary desire”, she reports, “was to “protect these ancient wet-draped-Venuses”, represented vulnerable as she saw it during her residency at the Villa Medici in 2019. Rome has many examples heroic men’s sculptures with projecting muscles, so why not redistribute the cards and arm all bodies? “The question of the relationship to the female body”, the artist tells us, “is something I have experienced in my personal construction”, reminding us of the universal part she places in her creations. The body of these naked Venuses is at the same time the body of the artist but more widely the body of all women.

With Armors, the artist insists on “the representation of the female body but especially of the different states of the female body misrepresented in the Art History as the topic of pregnancy, childbirth, abortion…”. It is as much about protecting as making these bodies visible. 

Credits : View of Jeanne Vicerial's solo exhibition: "ARMORS", 7 January - 11 March 2023, Galerie Templon, Paris.

The artist also reminds us that “the human presence of the body is intrinsic to the technique of knitting and weaving.” The technical process of Jeanne Vicerial is quite unique, it follows a partnership with the MINES ParisTech. It is a robotic tool that places the artist’s work at the level of digital craft.

Coming back to the body, Jeanne Vicerial’s artistic process was created on the basis of the made-to-measure and ready-to-wear involving obviously a pronounced taste for anthropomorphism. She creates silhouettes as a negative of the human body that would be in search of their opposite, their soul mate. In the work of the artist, the place granted to the research of the other can only lead to more profond pieces.

Credits : View of Jeanne Vicerial's solo exhibition: "ARMORS", 7 January - 11 March 2023, Galerie Templon, Paris.

For Sartre, the presence of the other precipitates a new dimension of the self. In the same way, the presence of the visitor/spectator (the other) fully activates the artistic and poetic potential of these armors since “the true bodies are those of the visitors”. The other is also the dancer, the performer who activates the pieces. Jeanne Vicerial recalls that her creations are only “traces of bodies” which make the echo of the visitor or the model. By this resonance, the artist has created universal bodies beyond gender, associating both male and female in a perpetual “mutation”. It is thus a question of silhouettes that refuse to be classified by gender in favor of the visibilization of universal images.

Credits : View of Jeanne Vicerial's solo exhibition: "ARMORS", 7 January - 11 March 2023, Galerie Templon, Paris.

It does not seem too ambitious to say that we all have a body to which these armors whisper hypnotic words, looking for the ideal host body to put on, as one puts on a glove on a hand. These armors are intended for the other, but especially for the Other, the Second Sex.

Credits:
Coverphoto (Home) : Joseph Schiano di Lambo
Photos: Andrien Millot
Text: Raphaël Levy
Translation: Raphaël Levy

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Bavan Gallery, CONNECTIVE STRINGS OF RESILIENCE

Bavan Gallery, CONNECTIVE STRINGS OF RESILIENCE

Tehran based Bavan Gallery presents its first edition of a series of projects entitled “The Land Of The Cypress Tree”, opening during Art Dubai and open for the public until May.

This program of exhibition takes inspiration from the Cypress Tree of Abarkuh located in Iran’s province of Yazd believed to be the oldest cypress tree world. Numerous legends attributed to this tree, its original planting and the travelers who came to gaze upon it, it is above all a symbol of resistance and resilience, of survival under the most extreme conditions, the ideal expression of perseverance.

The eventful contemporary history of Iran has been rarely absent from media exposure and the talk of politicians and activists. How would one try to define himself while keeping out the ideals imposed by media, politicians, intellectuals and the general public? For many Iranian artists the answer has been an introspective exploration and an emphasis on individuality and the individual experience. As the social-political reality remains quite unique to Iran, so does the quality of individual experience in this country, and many artists offer inward journeys in their work that ultimately connect to the broad spectrum that is life in Iran.

“The Land Of The Cypress Tree” is a trans-generational group show Bavan Gallery shows the work of multiple generations of Iranian artists, a collage of ideas and ideals. For these artists the question of survival is often driven by the question “How far can one take one’s thought and imagination”?

“Today there are so many young and talented artists working in Iran especially women artists despite all their obstacles. I see their future so bright and Bavan tries to keep them internationally presented. I believe we will hear from Iranian artists more than before in the coming years.”

Ava Ayoubi, founder of Bavan Gallery

Credits:
Coverphoto (Home): by Samira Alikhanzadeh
Photos (from top to bottom): works by Samira Alikhanzadeh, Mimi Amini, Elham Pourkhani, Zarbaf
Text: Anahita Vessier

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ALICE GRENIER NEBOUT, Nostalgia of a Lost Paradise

ALICE GRENIER NEBOUT, Nostalgia of a Lost Paradise

Alice Grenier Nebout is a French-Canadian artist who lives and works in Paris. We met her in her charming Parisian studio where she presents us her fantasies on canvas. 

You told me that all started one summer with a boat, could you tell us this story? 

This story is about a little girl who went on vacation with her dad but was terribly bored. This father, who is none other than mine, gave her brushes and paint to occupy her. The young girl set her pictorial sight on an old boat on the edge of the lake next to which they lived.

This boat became my lifeline, both an artistic support and a key to another world. I spent my days on this lake observing fish, frogs and birds. Somehow, I’m still that same child discovering the world. Basically, this boat symbolizes my encounter with painting and nature, two essential elements in my artistic practice.

“I seek to reunite the human with its natural environment.”

Human, nature, and animal, three motifs that recur in your paintings.

This trio, almost sacred to me, composes my paintings both in form and content. I seek to reunite humans with their natural environment, which requires colors capable of uniting nature, animal and man, such as blue which recalls the sea and its depth, the mystery or the third eye which opens us to the world and its knowledge. Moreover, it is important that there is this unity where these elements become universality of the world.

“These paintings are my only way to contribute to the rescue of nature.”

Representing nature today is not innocent. 

There is nothing innocent about me representing nature and putting it together with human because I am devastated by the recent climatic events. Using this nature in my paintings is the only way to make people understand the ecological situation in which we are. Linking animals, humanity and nature could make people understand that we must respect our world. These paintings are my only way to contribute to the rescue of nature.

After all, there is something very utopian in your work, the dreamed unity of all things. 

Absolutely, I get away from reality to create a world of my own in which I feel comfortable, where nature is protected, a world where harmony is the key word. I prefer to invent my own reality than to represent a reality already present. These paintings are like shields, they protect me from the outside world, from reality. 

Your vision of nature gives us the impression of observing Edenic gardens!

I keep representing gardens of Eden. It is a subject that will always recur, all my life. For me, we all come from there, we are all cousins. Of course, I detach myself from the religious dimension and I only keep this idea of unity and harmony. It is about a question of mental habits, the Western viewer is used to the biblical visual codes which allow him to enter these universes that I create. 

The Garden of Eden is also a man and a woman, equality in the duality of the sexes. 

Exactly, my paintings are also built by the duality between male and female. Something is interesting in the verticality of the trunks which mark my paintings; symbols that evoke sexuality and masculinity. These trunks are the very structure of my paintings. When the trees are painted, I have my balance. Without this masculine verticality, I am lost in these very feminine and sinuous mountains where everything is more flexible. Balance can only exist when the balance of the sexes is respected. 

“It is as if I was healing my wounds and massaging the pains of the world on the surface of the canvas.”

These men and women exude more than a sense of universality. 

It is also about sex. Sensuality and love are also essential components for me, which pass through the gesture since the funds are done by my hands. It becomes a very tactile and intimate work where I mix the colors by caressing them, being in this way closer to the canvas. Without this, it is impossible for me to instinctively put color on emotion. It is as if I was healing my wounds and massaging the pains of the world on the surface of the canvas. There is this need to feel the material slip under the palm of my hand. 

Does this sensuality serve the feminine and/or your femininity?

What is also important to me is the liberation of the female body from male gaze. I represent very feminine women, feeling comfortable in their bodies, reminiscent of ancient divinities. Indeed, the visual echo with Venus is obvious. It is the universal woman who represents love and beauty. It is by disguising these divinities with these characters and this nature that I express my femininity. 

My paintings are therefore almost an expression of femininity. Nature is a woman.

Credits:
Coverphoto (Home) : Anahita Vessier
Photos : Anahita Vessier
Text: Raphaël Levy
Traduction : Raphaël Levy
Alice Grenier Nebout’s website

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Merging Horizons

MERGING HORIZONS

« Merging Horizons » is an exhibition curated by Tatiana Gecmen-Waldek and Anahita Vessier in collaboration with Ab Anbar Gallery at Cromwell Place in London.

It refers to the concept of ‘fusion of horizons’ by the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) and creating a dialogue between two Iranian artists, Sonia Balassanian and Hessam Samavatian.

A dialectical concept that results from the rejection of two alternatives: objectivism, where the objectification of the other is achieved by forgetting oneself; and absolute knowledge, according to which that universal history can be articulated in a single horizon. Consequently, he maintains that we exist neither in closed horizons, nor in a single horizon.

This notion of « horizons » refers in our show to the visual perception of horizons one can find in Sonia Balassanian’s and Hessam Samavatian’s works as well as to « horizon » as a way to conceptualize our discernment. The horizon is as far as we can perceive or understand it. Comprehension occurs when our current knowledge is shifted to a new, broader horizon suggested by an encounter, an experience or even a surprise.

Our exhibition « Merging Horizons » interpretates this fusion by connecting the spectators’ knowledge with the artists’ expression of horizons broadening its perception beyond imagination.

Tatiana Gecmen-Waldek and Anahita Vessier

“Merging Horizon” private viewing cocktail at Cromwell Place, May 24th 2022:

 

Credits:
Coverphoto (Home): flyer featuring Sonia Balassanian’s work “Untitled 2018”
Photos: Michal Rubin
Text: Tatiana Gecmen-Waldek & Anahita Vessier

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DANIELA BUSARELLO, Expressionist of the Living

DANIELA BUSARELLO, Expressionist of the Living

Daniela Busarello describes herself as a visual artist and expressionist of the living. Indeed, the place of biological entities, whether they are plants or humans, is central in the work of this artist who seeks to introspect the world around her. This is why she is interested in the relations between Man and Nature but also in the inter-human relations which are illustrated by a questioning on the feminist cause, among others.  

Foto: Piotr Rosinski

Painting is at the center of your current practice. Tell us how you turned from an architect in Brazil to a painter in France.

It was an exciting journey in which I finally found my voice. Without really knowing why, I found myself one day on a plane to Paris to spend a sabbatical year away from my work as an architect in Brazil. Perhaps it was the feeling that if I did not leave Brazil at this moment, I would never be able to do so ever again. I woke up on my 40th birthday in my Parisian apartment with the feeling that my anxieties were gone. So I decided to sign up for the School of Fine Arts, les Beaux-Arts de Paris.

It was an adult live drawing class with human models. I was lucky enough to have a great teacher who understood that it bothered me to copy things as they are, I wanted to get into them, see further, deeper than my eyes could. It was through my drawings that I discovered the interiority of the world and the bodies. What I discovered above all is my interiority: I am a painter, I am a woman.

“I am a painter, I am a woman.”

You call yourself a woman and not a feminist?

You know, I find there is something stronger to call oneself a woman, it’s being in opposition to the other sex: I am a woman. There is a benevolence, a look, a delicacy. It also brings a whole maternal side that feminism does not. 

We love being women with all our strengths and weaknesses, don’t we.

Absolutely, I don’t want to compete with men. I don’t want to be a man. I live with this feminine power, with all its strengths and weaknesses that drive my creation. It really comes from my viscera, I couldn’t do it differently. Softness, for example, is also a human trait, it’s the mankind that interests me. 

And where does this interest for humans come from?  

I think it comes from my former life when I was an urban architect. Before designing a project, I would have to study the ground, humans are central in the process. I think I’ve never stopped being sensitive about it and about the relationships with the Other, the Other being a human being, a plant, an animal, the city. These body-landscapes are born through my gesture, in the continuity of my own body.

You talk about environment, landscape, plants, we might think that humans are not your only muse. 

There is a concept in architecture and philosophy of the genius loci, the spirit of the place. It is an idea that inspires my practice and for which I really immerse myself in nature with a protocol that I have established. I start by taking pictures of plants, flowers, stones or trees that I will collect during one of my trips. I make with these collected materials a powder that I can use as paint. That’s how I keep the spirit and energy of a place. It is an interior quest but also a questioning about what unites us to all things, in other words, the cosmos.

And what is the place that concerns you most today?

Of course Brazil and especially the Atlantic Forest, on the eve of its disappearance. Picking a flower on the sidewalk, like I did, is also a piece of this great ecosystem endangered by human activity. 

“Painting has become my new breath, I can’t not paint.”

Somewhere you save the forests of Brazil in your own way by perpetuating them in your painting. Art has the aspiration to exist forever, perhaps unfortunately not the Atlantic Forest.

I didn’t see it like this, but you’re probably right, it’s like some kind of unconscious protection of my country. All these processes are also about Brazilian socio-cultural problems that are getting worse and worse with a real race to destruction. In fact, painting has become my new breath, I can’t not paint. It is all these conscious and unconscious worries and anxieties that I infuse in my gesture when I paint. Although I prepare some paintings beforehand, it doesn’t often end as I had imagined. The unconscious guides me and allows me to express myself freely on the canvas. It’s almost therapeutic. 

Your gesture brings a depth that transcends the simple description of the world…

However, it wasn’t always like this, my first paintings were quickly completed. It was the instantaneousness of human feelings and relationships that I was depicting. Today, the act of painting is more important and it takes me a month now to complete a piece. The time when I’m not painting is as important, because it allows me to think. It’s thanks to these large canvases that I understood that taking time brings another breath to my gesture, something very meditative.

“Taking the time brings another breath to my gesture.”

And all these trips, these ideas, where does it lead you? 

I see my current work as an imaginary journey, a kind of mental exhibition if you want. It allows me to work without any real pressure. I start to make the herbal paints I brought back from Brazil, it results in a very lively shades of browns that encourage me to continue my expeditions. I am going to participate at an artistic residency program in Bahia very soon.

Credits:
Coverphoto (Home) : Piotr Rosinski
Photos : Piotr Rosinski ; Franck Jouery ; Luis Alvarez ; Gilad Sasporta
Text: Raphaël Levy
Traduction : Raphaël Levy
Daniela Busarello’s website

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MARYAM “MIMI” AMINI, Self-studies

MARYAM “MIMI” AMINI, Self-studies

Ever since her childhood, Mimi Amini enjoyed painting the objects around her and cutting their shape out of the paper, and then creating almost three-dimensional small-scale architectural models.
As a teenager she preferred to skip school and spending her day around the garden next to Isfahan’s Art High School, located in a fascinating area, close to Zayandeh-Rood river and the archeological museum,  looking at the art students sitting around with their drawing boards, working, drawing and painting.  

“The passion to find a proper representation of myself and finding a place where I belonged to have captivated my imagination all through these years, and I think my choice of geography and location follow the same passion.” she says.

Mimi, in this beautiful old house where you live and work in the north of Tehran every little corner breathes your creative energy, everywhere and everything is art.

Looking back at my childhood, I realize that we were trained by our parents to be ‘the best’ and as ‘successful’ ones who would ‘acquire’ things, and that was perhaps the initial steps into our fall. Yet, the wave-like periods of my life were always defined by the weight of ‘losing’ things and learning to lift up and fly.

The passion to find a proper representation of myself and finding a place where I belonged to have captivated my imagination all through these years.

This is the reason why I have stayed in my current studio in the northern part of Tehran, within walking distance of the mountain slopes. It is closely related to the same sense.

The sense of balance between nature, space, body and mind… How much does your artistic practice nourish this constant spiritual search for harmony?

My attitude and approach towards materiality in my pieces, have been derivative of how I looked at the world. I have been in pursuit of a ‘designed’ lifestyle, one that gradually emerges by moving consistently, to generate meaningful improvements in my life, and to reach outputs that would be in harmony with my life.

And always solitary in this quest of harmony?

I am a painter. In my artistic practice, since the very beginning, I have been focusing on understanding myself and self-portraiture, and of course, self-study.

Layer after layer, and time after time, ‘making’ myself has become the subject of my work.

My paintings moved forward without prior drafts and sketches, each creating their own independent world, and leading to an evolutionary chain.

In this evolutionary chain, what will be your next creative exploration? 

In recent years, both my mind and life went through several changes and so I needed a new structure, often leading to fresher approaches for the development of appearance and meaning in my paintings. That was how I became more interested in making them three-dimensional and more dependent on the space —with the space working as a kind of medium of delivery.
So, yes, I’d like to practice seeing in 360-degrees and transforming two dimensions to three and vice versa.

My dream is to work on a film project, like a cinematic experience playing in an atmospheric, a kind of a “nontime bound” dimension.

How does this “nontime bound” instant look like?

Pause, and… (a smile), when she reached her chosen shelter, she was relieved, hid her new beak into her wings… moves her feathers… turned around… rid herself of her old feathers… aligned her feet, looked around and sat down… her eyes fixated on a point and turned into a gaze. She gazes!

This interview has been recorded during lockdown in Iran in February 2021.
Credits:
Photos : Selfportraits by Mimi Amini at her studio in Tehran
Text: Ashkan Zahraei / Anahita Vessier
Maryam “Mimi” Amini’s website

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