Sara Rahbar
Sara Rahbar (born 1976, in Tehran,Iran) is a contemporary Iranian artist living and working between Iran and New York. She works in mixed media.
Collections
Centre Pompidou - Musée National d´Art Moderne, Paris
The Saatchi Collection, UK
Burger Collection, Hong-Kong
The Devi Art Foundation, India
Collection Nadour, Rüdiger K. Weng, Krefeld/Paris
The FPM Collection, Florian Peters-Messer, Berlin
Ernst Hilger Private Collection, Vienna
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Rahbar
Sara Rahbar was born in Tehran in 1976, but fled her birthplace during the period of immense upheaval that followed the revolution in Iran and the start of the Iran-Iraq war. This distance, this proximity is developed by the artist, based on memory, longing and inertia in inhabiting tensions of dual disjuncture. Rahbar studied in London and New York, and now spends most of her productive life between Tehran and New York. In this going back and forth, an apocalyptic memory has been revised in her reworking of traditional materials into proto-contemporary textiles and textures of national belonging. The symbol of ideological and nationalistic violence, the Flag, has been one of the main focuses of her collage conversations and contestations.
Multiplying the number of possible readings by drawing on heritage provides a diachronic innovation within which interpoetic relations are realizable- both on the level of aesthetic inventions from multiple sources and in how styles and ideas illustrate certain realities- of geographies, of hope and of history. In routing the audience through the multiple spaces that one image can occupy, Rahbar manages to provide a matrix within which a cultural translation and contradiction is articulated. By curating tradition, these beautiful flags attract both the western gaze and allow for an aesthetic dynamism to be exemplified. We begin with attraction and end up being repulsed within the same moment of negotiating her works- in refusing the atrocious to be removed from the works, Rahbar creates a political power that imbues her statement about seeing and being.
In one of her recent statements, she states, “Our foundations lay, but our houses have burned to the ground. Building castles in the sky, for a species that cannot fly, brick by limb we tear it down. Thinking that we are moving forwards, yet moving backwards all along. Gajar woman and golden toys, we wait for dawn.” Even within this contemporary evocation, across borders and palpitating with barbarism, her constant vigilance regarding the fallen past and an unrealized future remain the means of her economic reality and her imagination. The global neighborhood, she inhabits, where disenfranchisement through plight and flight are becoming important, offer fragments by which we understand the configurations of the US version of free trade and democracy.
Text Written by: Shaheen Merali
ARTIST STATEMENTS
"We left our woes behind, with only echoes of our previous lives remaining. Seeking continuation, time and refuge, human beings attempting to survive our selves, our lives, and our present locations."
"My work is my story told, it is a direct reflection of the constant questioning of the who I am, what and where is home, and why I am here. It is the mirror image of my life, my geographic locations, my history, my present, my environments and my memories."
"Metamorphosing and transforming for the means of surviving it all, our foundations lay, but our houses have burned to the ground. Building castles in the sky, for a species that cannot fly, brick by limb we tear it down. Thinking that we are moving forwards, yet moving backwards all along."
"Gajar woman and golden toys, we wait for dawn."
Education
2004-2005, Central Saint Martins Collage of Art and Design (Fine Art)
1996-2000, The Fashion Institute of Technology (Fashion Design)
EXHIBITIONS
2010
"Hope", Palais des Arts de Dinard
"Whatever we had to Lose we Lost, and in a Moonless Sky we Marched", Carbon 12, Dubai
"Iran inside Out", The Farjam Collection, Dubai
"Elles@centrepompidou",The Center Pompidou, Paris
"Never Run Away, Reena Kallat and Sara Rahbar", Stux gallery, New York
"The Promise of Loss, A Contemporary Index of Iran", Arario Gallery New York
"Eye of the Beholder", Nassau County Museum of Fine Art, New York
2009
"The Edible Woman", Kravets/Wehby Gallery, New York
"The Promise of Loss, A Contemporary Index of Iran", brot-kunsthalle, Vienna
"Iran Inside out: Influences of Homeland and Disaporic realitieson the works of 50 Contemporary Iranian Artists", DePaul University Museum, Chicago
"The Seen and the Hidden: (Dis)covering the Veil", The Austrian Cultural Forum, New York
"Iran Inside out: Influences of Homeland and Disaporic realities on the works of 50 Contemporary Iranian Artists", Chelsea Art Museum, New York
"Collective de 5 artistes Iranians", Galerie Hussenot, Paris
"The Promise of Loss", Orario Gallery, New York
Indian Popular Culture, and beyond: The Untold (the rise of) Schisms, Sala Alcalá 31 in Madrid, Spain
Artist in Exile , Arario Gallery, New York
Hilger Contemporary, Vienna
Tyler Art Gallery, New York
Unveiled: New art from the middle east,The Saatchi Gallery, London
2008
Galerie Hussenot, “What was the word I want”, Paris
Cramer Contemporary,"Look what love did to us once again", an Iranian group show, Geneve Switzerland
In Transition Russia, National Centre of Contemporary Art, Moscow
In Transition Russia, Museum of Fine Arts, Ekaterinburg
XVA gallery, Bastakiya, Dubai
Everywhere is War (and rumors of war). Bodhi Art, Mumbai, India
"On a clear day you can see forever", Hilger Contemporary, Vienna
Emerging Discourse: Multiple and Overlapping Contemplations from the Diaspora, Bodhi Art, New York
Raid Projects, Los Angeles
This Case of Conscience - Spiritual Flushing and the Remonstrance, Queens Museum of Art, New York
Regional Delicacies, Phillips de Pury & Company at the CAF In collaboration with XVA gallery & Alef Magazine, Bastakiya, Dubai
Human Rights Awareness Tour, a traveling exhibition, The Veil: Visible and invisible spaces, a traveling exhibition
Persian Arts Festival: Weaving the Common Thread: Perspectives from Iranian Artists, Queens Museum of Art, New York
2007
Continuity and Change: Islamic Tradition in Contemporary Art, The Williamsburg Art and Historical Center, Brooklyn, New York
Hyphenation Exhibition, University of Maryland, Union Gallery, Maryland
Iranian Literary Arts Festival, Theater Artaud, San Francisco
Inclusion Exclusion, Bronco exhibit gallery Cal Poly Pomona, Los Angeles
Celluloid, Gallery One, San Francisco
Emergency Room, PS1 MoMA New York
Emergence, Current Gallery, Baltimore MD
Beyond Persia, Gallery One, San Francisco
Changing Climate, Changing Colors 24 Contemporary Muslim Artists, Henry Street Settlement, New York
2006
Chicago Artist Month, Beyond Boundaries, Global Citizen, John Fluevog, Chicago
Everything, All at Once, QMA Biennial, Queens Museum of Art, New York
Nobodys Enemy, Queens Museum of Art, New York
Great Neck Arts Center, New York (Awarded Honorable Mention)
The Shelter Rock Art Gallery, New York
BT, Brooklyn Lyceum, New York
2004
See Williamsburg, Lunar Base Gallery, Brooklyn, NY