DATE

Sep 5 – Dec 11

LOCATION

Slater Concourse Gallery

Over the past two years, the Tufts University Art Galleries have welcomed new artworks into the collection from our broad community of artists—be they alumni, former faculty, or Greater Boston area artists. While the techniques, materials, and subjects may vary, the works on view in Portrait as Place share a common interest in understanding the capacious nature of personal and communal identities. Accordingly, they each complicate the genre of portraiture with images and strategies landscape, language, media, and even data, as a reflection of the communities, places, and broader sociopolitical forces that shape and foster the inner and outer self.

Portrait as Place / Place as Portraiture is organized in gratitude to our newest collections group who made a number of these recent acquisitions possible—the TUAG Acquisition Committee (TAC). Founded by generous supporters, TAC is invested in diversifying TUAG’s permanent collection to reflect our community by actively purchasing artworks by BIPOC, women, and LGBTQ+ artists.

Featuring artwork by David Antonio Cruz, Julia Csekö, Gonzalo Fuenmayor, Dell Hamilton, Annette Lemieux, Helina Metaferia, Evelyn Rydz, Lorna Simpson, Taravat Talapesand, Margaret Rose Vendryes, and Suara Welitoff.

Press Release

Who has it worse: Sisyphus or the boulder?
Do they clock out and make small talk like Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog?
a perfection in the unseen
like an unreleased pilot
a lost album
Something broke and never put it back together, died and came back wrong. Teased back into place as a new example of what can’t ever really be known. Set a few years back as Portland first smoldered and then burned under a pile of overflowing contradictions, but not a dramatization, more a period piece set too soon, with too small of a jump, a hint of the grand in creation through vulnerability. If pushed too far too fast a vulnerability imposed can lead to a sublimation, grappling for what should have been as it drifts off into the atmosphere, a strange perfection in what never will be. The lost work from Take Care splayed out in a haphazard crime scene photo, strewn, damaged and left primarily to the imagination, gives way for memorializing and eventually to Aftercare. Enjoy it for what it could have been and for what it is now, a jumping off point for a new body, an occasion to mend.
—Chase Allgood, 2023

There’s no rush. They have aftercare.
overheard at the grocery store

Helen’s Costume is pleased to present Aftercare: New painting by Taravat Talepasand and Terry Powers. For Helen’s previous exhibitions HC curator and director Steve Brown has paired artists from different states/countries to channel a fresh current of art through Portland. Usually artists who have never met. For this exhibition the social seeps into this sanctuary for the plastic arts. Talepasnd and Powers have known each other for years and have exhibited together before. Aftercare is the first time they have each made work with the intention of it interacting with each other, going so far as to create collaborative canvases.

This is Taravat’s first series of new paintings made since her 2022 exhibition Take Care was canceled due to a break-in vandalism party where work was destroyed. She continues her fierce commitment to the Woman Life Freedom -
زن زندگی آزادی movement with a series of new sticker paintings that reference album covers and a banned Iranian feminist magazine. The stickers are comfort shields, bandaids even, honoring a personal yet relatable self.

Terry Powers’ observational paintings pull the viewer away from their screen to a meditative state, an awareness of light and air. Like Talepasnd he loses himself in the tradition of painting and channels the eternal. These paintings were started at his home in Utah and driven to Oregon to be finished in dialogue with Talepasand.

The stickers are real, The light is real. Everything is painting.

—Petra Poffenberger, 2023

Aftercare is broght to you in part by the generous support of Converge 45.

Group Shoe 3  

curated by Mario Ayala  

August 5 - September 17, 2023
opening reception: August 5, 2023
7:00 - 10:00 pm

Group Shoe 3, a group exhibition curated by Mario Ayala featuring work by one-hundred and seventy-two artists from his community of friends and collaborator.

Artist List:

Aaron Jupin
Aaron Rose
Adam Alessi
Aidan Cullen
Ade Ogunmowo
Alberto Cuadros
Alex Becerra
Alex Chaves
Alex Constable
Alex Petty
Alex Ziv
Alfonso Gonzalez Jr.
Alicia McCarthy
Allen Brewer
Amia Yokoyama
Andrea Sonnenberg
Andrew Balasia
Andrew Barnes
Andrew Chapman
Andrew Luck
Andrew McClintock
Asher Gillman
Atiba Jefferson
Augustus Thompson 
Aurel Schmidt
Bay Kempthorne
Bailey Anders
Ben Noam
Brendan Lynch
Brett Amory
Brett Flanigan
Caitlin Mitchell-Dayton
Cali Dewitt
Carley Gmitro
Carlos Agredano
Carlos Jaramillo
Casey Jones
Cesar Valdivia
Chanel Khoury
Chito
Chloe Maratta
Chris Johansen
Chris Lux
Chris Millic
Chris Suarez
Christian Franzen
Colton Callahan
DBrad
Daniel Albrigo
Darren Romanelli
Dave Schubert
David Bayus
Dennis Kernohan
Dennis Wornick
Devin Reynolds
Dylan Roberts
Eddie Salinas
Emma Kohlmann
Eric Renteria
Erlin-Adones Geffrard
Ethan Shaw
Flannery Silva
Francesco Igory Deiana
Frankie Carino
Friends With You
Gabriela Ruiz
George Crampton
Grant Guttierez
Grant Levy-Lucero
Guillaume Ollivier
Gus Thompson
Henry Fey
Henry Gunderson
Hunter Ney
Ivan Bridges
John Alving
Jack Greer
Jaime Munoz
Jake Freilich
James Jensen
Jasaya Neale
Jasmine Monsegue
Jerry Peña
Jesse Walton
Johanna Jackson
Joe Roberts
John Defazio
John Garcia
Jonas Wood
Jordan Hill
Justin Alexis
Justin Cole Smith
Justin Hagar
Kappy
Karla Canseco
Kevin Earl Taylor
Kristine Reano-Hager
Lauren D'Amato
Lauren Halsey
Leslie Shows
Lizette Hernandez
Lucien Shapiro
Luis Hernandez
Lunch Box
Lydia Fong 
Maia Ruthlee
Malcolm Kenter
Maria Maea
Marisa Takal
Martine Syms
Matt Borruso
Matt McCormick
Matthew Bajda
Max Marttila
Mia Carucci
Mia Scarpa
Michael Alvarez
Michael Bala
Michael Torchia
Mitsu Okubo
Muzae Sesay
Natasha Romano
Nathan Harris
Nathan Kostechko
Nick Angelo
Nick Makanna
Nicolas Torres
Noah Cohen
Noel Becerra
Oliver Holden
ORFN
Orion Martin
Orion Shepard
Ozzie Juarez
Paige Valentine
Patrick "JPW3" Walsh
Paul Flores
Paul Gellman
Pedro Verdin
Peter Sonnenberg
Peter Sutherland
Petra Collins
Quinn Arneson
Raul Baltazar
Ray Potes
Rene Lopez
Rikki Wright
Robert Falco
Roman Koval
Rossana Romero
Ruby Neri
Ryan Delaval
Ryan Preciado
Sal Preciado
Sandy Kim
Savannah Claudia Levin
Sayre Gomez
Shizu Saldamando
Sonya Sombreuil
Steve Aldahl
Tamara Santibanez
Taravat Talepasand
Tim Diet
Terry Powers
Terror Supply
Tristan Hirsch
Victor Barragan
Vinnie Smith
Will Boone
Willy Reed
Xara Thustra
Yarrow Slaps

طراوت | TARAVAT is a record of one Iranian-American woman’s attempts to grapple with the difficult legacy of women’s freedoms and Muslim identity—to transform it visually, to make something both beautiful and uncomfortable. Investigating the cultural taboos that reflect on gender and political authority, Taravat Talepasand offers a forum for the Woman, Life, Freedom movement—and the intersectionality of the international fight for human rights and female autonomy.

Made in Iran and born in America during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Talepasand explores how women navigate the geographic and physiological boundaries between East and West, revealing women’s bodies and perspectives becoming surfaces imprinted with the uncertainties of political and social upheavals—past and present. Scholar and curator Dr. Jordan Amirkhani describes, “This mid-career survey points to the irrefutable fact that the symbolic content of women’s bodies and representational histories mark an uneasy marriage between an Iran shaped by the will of Allah, the will of the Father, and the exuberant wills of the Iranian people.”

The exhibition offers a mix of paintings, drawings, collage, sculpture, video, and neon sculpture. Referencing the visual conventions of Pop art, propaganda, and appropriations, Talepsand’s work is characterized by labor-intensive and often repetitive processes to bring a focus on acceptable beauty and its relationship with art history. The human figure often found in her pieces is a treacherous place between narrative and introspection.

By mixing these disparate strands, Talepasand creates a cognitive short circuit, asking us to reconsider what we think we know. By staging encounters between the aesthetic conventions, techniques, and traditions of European and Persian miniature art, the work challenges viewers to uncover (and thus confront) the tricks and abstractions that inform effective forms of image-making and propaganda that continue to shape our understanding of “Eastern” and “Western” subjecthood and aesthetics. The result is a sophisticated reversal of the assumptions associated with Iranian culture and the ways in which political propaganda often lives between the ancient demand for timelessness, and the modern demand for immediacy.

The work asks the viewer to reconsider the various ideological assumptions that index Iranian identity, state power, and gender in order to consider how the body and the image come to signify and rebel against normative notions of Iranian subjectivity.

The exhibition will be complemented by public programming throughout the summer that will highlight the voices, struggles, and personal stories of artists in the Bay Area who are carrying the torch of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. More details to follow.

TARAVAT

The Law Warschaw Gallery is pleased to present TARAVAT, a survey of Taravat Talepasand’s signature work from the last fifteen years.

Made in Iran and born in America during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Taravat Talepasand explores how women navigate the geographic and physiological boundaries between East and West, revealing women’s bodies and perspectives becoming surfaces imprinted with the uncertainties of political and social upheavals. This exhibition is a record of one Iranian-American woman’s attempts to grapple with her difficult legacy, to transform it visually, to make something both beautiful and uncomfortable of this condition.

Growing up Iranian within America had been arduous and awkward. As a whole, we, as Iranians, had little consciousness of assimilation because of a constant denial of our permanence in America. In Iran, I found myself to be transgressive, yet within American culture being Iranian is transgressive in that American individualism and Iranian deference to tradition were irreconcilable. Traveling down one of those paths meant turning your back on the other even if the defiance was temporal; this was the hidden catch of the formation of my identity. The contradictions caused my head to constantly bounce around the question of inherent identity– that which is exterior and self-defined versus inward and pre-determined.

Taravat Talepasand is a Portland-based artist, activist, and educator whose labor-intensive interdisciplinary painting practice questions normative cultural behaviors within contemporary power imbalances. As an Iranian-American woman, Talepasand explores the cultural taboos that reflect on gender and political authority. Her approach to representation and figuration reflects the cross-pollination, or lack thereof, in our Western Society.

Taravat Talepasand interview with Jenna Wortham March 2021

Jenna Wortham: Taravat! CONGRATULATIONS! This show looks like the incredible culmination of years of thinking and hard work and ideation and I can’t wait to hear more about it. Thank you for the honor of the early peek and the privilege of discussing it with you :)

Taravat Talepasand: It feels so right to be having this conversation with you, my sistren. We continue to show up for each other in honoring our friendship and life’s work. To have your eyes rest upon my work and have mine absorb your words resonates so deep with me. In gratitude to have this be a marker in our lives together.

JW: We’ve been friends for a long time, and there was a period in the recent past where you weren’t sure if you were going to make any more work for a while. But then this abundance! What shifted for you, in terms of your creative process?

TT: I woke up and had to find myself and my studio practice within the dark. I felt stuck in a loop with feedback that didn’t serve me anymore. The curtain was drawn, and I found myself having to reconnect and rewire my intentions to create. In doing so, I found new narratives that expanded outside of my own life, my Iranianess and the Diaspora that I had been creating within. I returned to my studio knowing that to be vulnerable in the process of creating is part of doing the real self-work. Letting go of what I thought people expected from me and my work resulted in creating works with no filter, honoring myself and ideas for an all-inclusive reflection of life, feelings, and truths. In the end, I choose to exist by creating art.

JW: How did you come up with the name of the show? It’s brilliant.

TT: One of the most iconic books that I loved reading as a young teenager, Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret by Judy Blume, explored the ideas of self around sex and religion. I felt that using this familiar title would resonate with women who had also connected with the book and may also be navigating life and self-reflection in a profound way. Moving back to Oregon with a homecoming exhibition where Judy Blume had written the book felt right. Replacing God with Allah and Margaret with my name Taravat sets up the entire exhibition with a question and answer: Believe, trust and honor yourself in the process of life.

JW: How did the pandemic shape the work that you made for the show?

TT: The pandemic awakened a certain reverence for the possibilities of creating again. Also, at the opposite of selfishness is making yourself a priority, meaning to start implementing practices and modalities that you work through during this time. The pandemic has exposed us all to a raw world that forces us to see and question the now - forced me to sit with myself and reconsider my relationships with everything and all my routines. Changing my relationship with devices and all social networking platforms freed me from being influenced by anything or anyone. Making myself a priority benefited my work to receive the full reservoir of energy, awareness, love and respect.

JW: In one of our earlier conversations about the show, you talked about the way you have historically existed in the hyphenated space -- including your identity as Iranian-American, among other things -- and how limiting (?) that is starting to feel. Can you talk more about how you’re thinking about that hyphen now -- leaning into it or leaning away from it? 

TT: Everything that I have created up until now helped me connect with a Diaspora that kept me in touch with a heritage and culture that I had only understood through my parents. I embraced my hyphenated identity into something less abstract through my artwork to find parallel narratives between America and Iran. In doing so, I revealed my family trauma immigrating to America. I’ve realized that my family trauma isn’t something that I need to carry and to stop replicating it would heal back generations and clear a path to move forward. No longer leaning into or away from the hyphenated space, rather finding my place in the inbetween, being the hyphen.

JW: I really want to know everything you feel comfortable sharing about the work titled Kill Your Masters, and playing with the dichotomies of familiar and the grotesque, the utopian and dystopian, safe and unsafe, old and the new, sick and well.

TT: As I am expanding spiritually, I find myself returning to my inner child. Cartoons draw up imagined identities for us to connect with the illustrated characters. Stickers are collected and stuck around you to never be removed. As an adult, I feel stuck by the rules that govern us all and the capitalistic systemic injustices that have bound and leashed. These caricatures are an anarchic subversive angle showing that innocence and imagination become eroded in the polarized American society in which we currently exist. They are reminders of the polarization that the dominating forces of society have created and continue to enforce through false hope.

JW: You’ve been working in realms of curiosity and discomfort for a while --- exploring unmentionables and provocative to explore the undercurrents and underbellies within us all and yourself -- do you still feel like you’re operating from that vantage with this show?

TT: To create is my practice to feel and invite anyone willing to reflect with it with me. My new work is coming from a safer space where the blasphemous, provocative and rebellion against said political viewpoints aren’t as loud. However, life will always present discomfort and challenges within us all. I’m working from a place where my curiosity is going inward and what I create unfolds an experience and emotional connection outwardly, to connect us all rather than separate me from you or them.

JW: As long as I’ve known you, you always rely on a deep well of source materials that inform your research and your thinking while you ideate on a new show. What were you reading, consuming, watching while you were sowing the seeds of this new work?

TT: Everything that I consume with every sense of my body informs my work. Continuing my relationship with entheogens to do self-work which has helped the way that I engage with my practice. Vice has a lot of interesting content keeping me inspired outside of my own life like “Pharmacopeia” or “Donkmaster.” Reading gives power to language that offers me to paint the space in which it takes me. Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour reminded me of the freedom to love and express a narrative without barriers. A 100-page book on Buddhism has brought me to tears and has helped me be more present. Black Futures by Kimberly Drew and you my love, has given me insight and beauty from a collection of people that I needed to know about and that influence me in all the right ways.

JW: You and I have been deeply psychically connected for years, and we had this incredible moment while you were working on the show. I was trying to buy myself some rue for my breathwork class, and accidentally mailed it to you, but, as it turned out -- it was in alignment with these ceramic evil eyes you were making. What can you tell me about why those were so important to include in this show and how they came together?

TT: The bond of energy between us runs so deep love. Receiving your rue while I was sculpting the Evil Eye felt like the universe was communicating to us. Burning rue is as ancient as the superstitious of the Evil Eye. The history and meaning behind rue and the Evil Eye have always fascinated me. There wasn’t a place that I lived in that didn’t have an Evil Eye or my maman burning rue to protect me and the space. Learning that the fascination of the Evil Eye was described as feminine inspired me to honor its symbol within the exhibition. I wanted to protect the space, works and gallery with respect and gratitude to those who choose to visit the show during the pandemic. As one enters the exhibition, they are also entering the pathways into the parts of my own psyche. To be vulnerable one feels the need to protect themself and feel safe. After all, isn’t that what we are all trying to maintain--to feel safe and protected? As the Evil Eye exists as a form of spirituality and ancient talisman, I decided to sculpt it on the backs of a religion that conflicted within me. Pressed into a copper dish inscribed with Allah, read backwards challenging the beliefs of monotheistic religion.

JW: What do you ultimately want people to take away from this body of work?

TT: To feel. To be moved by the colors and illuminations that have a physical relationship between the artwork and your body. To hold space for the experience being presented to you. To connect with something that resonates deep inside of you. To navigate yourself and others with love and empathy. To awaken and live on with gratitude. To know that when you speak to Allah, God, Buddha or any other spiritual being, know that you are having an internal dialogue within yourself. To take away a Fuck This Shit poster and color in how that makes you feel, as a reminder that we don’t have to accept the pathetic conditions of our environment – that we can transform it, by starting with ourselves and the way that we view the world. Put that up on your wall to remind you of this experience.

Gallery 16 is pleased to present Epoch featuring the work of Libby Black, Taravat Talepasand, and Josephine Taylor. 

Ep·och, /’epǝk/, noun: A period of time in history or a person’s life (fourteen years in the case of these artists) typically marked by notable events or particular characteristics. The long-standing friendship between Libby Black, Taravat Talepasand, and Josephine Taylor, has woven its way through many spheres of life: love, home, motherhood, work, culture, community, history, politics. What began two years ago as a correspondence via email between the artists evolved into a greater dialogue about what it means to be an artist, a feminist, a teacher and a mother. Inspired by a mutual love and respect for each other’s work, practice and careers, Epochpresents the work of these artists in dialogue together for the first time. It’s almost as if we are having a dinner party, only the art is the invited guest. When you get to a dinner party, the topics of conversation are not listed when you walk in; they happen naturally... We all have underlying themes.

In a society that demands a challenging and unforgiving work/life balance - especially as active and successful artists and mothers - these artists have ‘unapologetically persisted.’ Through various methods of appropriation, reauthoring and the shifting of perspectives, Black, Talepasand and Taylor explore ideas of domesticity and the presence of women in their work. Each of them displays an “extraordinary level of engagement with their craft, both in terms of technical skill and their ferociously smart, sometimes sneaky way of bringing viewers face to face with uncomfortable content. Strength is a common motif—physical, mental, spiritual—in work about politics, emotions, parenting, past traumas and present day-to-day life as a woman” (Maria Porges). 

Libby Black imbues a kind of power and autonomy to the domesticity of things around us. Using paper, paint, and a hot glue gun, she reshapes objects from her life into a series of still lifes that, in effect, become self-portraits coding her identity (as an artist, a mother, a lesbian, a dreamer, a fan, a lover). Often humble and humorous, the work simultaneously provokes commentary on larger societal issues. Black’s graphite re-drawing of New York Times newspaper pages and news photographs that she has collected over the years and redrawn, press the viewer to both “examine and experience our relationships to events that otherwise have a way of sinking beneath the surface of consciousness.”

Taravat Talepasand is an Iranian American and boldly explores her bicultural identity in her work. Acknowledging the persistence of memory and the past, and accepting that neither can be buried or wrapped away from sight, Talepasand creates work that highlights female empowerment and, at times, explains the complicated path that the artist has experienced alongside other women. These new sculptural paintings were made by stretching the sanctioned domestic fabrics from Iran over linen. A color field of casein milk paint on the linen highlights the dominant color of each unique, hand printed textile. With the same confident hand, Talepasand paints in tiny areas of narratives - persian miniatures illustrating ceremonies, love, relationships and customs alongside poppies and flowers - some sheathed by the Persian textiles, some intimately embedded within the flowering detail of the textile. These painted narratives explore the artist’s new life as a wife, mother and slowly unwind the patterns of her family and upbringing. 

Josephine Taylor considers the relationship between media and gender, specifically the way that MTV (the predominant access point to pop culture during the artist’s formative years) informed her ideas of sexual identity, gender roles, adversarial gender relationships, domesticity and romance. Taylor takes the still frames from a series of videos, reorients and refines the images through collage to look the way she wants them to look, and reauthors them through photogravure. Also featured is a series of love letters sent to the artist between 3rd grade and high school. With the same kindred love of detail and precision that Taylor uses to execute her large figurative drawings, she meticulously renders these, shifting the authorship from male to female. By taking the original and shifting it away from itself, Taylor ultimately disempowers the object of the agency with which it was initially impregnated.

This exhibition is accompanied by “Much Love and Respect,” the publication containing the series of emails exchanged between the artists along with a foreword and afterword by Maria Porges. Special thanks to Maria for her contribution, and to Mullowney Printing for their collaboration with Josephine Taylor on the photogravures.

Opening reception: Saturday March 30th | 6-8 pm
Performance by Hushidar Mortezaie and music performance by Mohsen Namjoo from 8pm–9pm

2019 marks the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution and with it a major cultural shift inside of the country with the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The revolution and its aftermath — including the 8-year Iran-Iraq war — has subsequently lead to over three million Iranians migrating to the West with the largest populations residing in the U.S., and half of the nation's Iranians residing in California. The Bay Area has been home to an active community for over 40 years, establishing themselves in all sectors of society from politics to the arts. More recently the Bay Area has welcomed another wave of Iranian migrants following the easing of U.S. visas in the aftermath of the disputed 2009 elections in Iran. They include professionals in every field, especially many engineers recruited by Silicon Valley, and a large number of artists and cultural producers with the promise to further enrich the Bay Area arts communities as well as one of the most culturally vibrant Iranian communities outside of Iran.

Once at Present marks this historic occasion with a multi-disciplinary exhibition and programming that further explore and convey the multi-faceted implications of cultural diaspora through the perspective of a new generation of Iranian artists creating in the Bay Area now. Tackling broad issues of migration, memory, identity and labor, the works in this exhibition present a rich diversity of practices that inform, question and expand the notions of belonging while examining ways of being and becoming part of the Iranian Diaspora.

The exhibition is organized with the sponsorship of the newly formed Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University and in conjunction with the first International Conference on Iranian Diaspora Studies, Forty Years and More, hosted by SFSU (March 28-30, 2019). Conference presentations in the arts, humanities, and social sciences will offer new scholarship and research about the Iranian diaspora from a variety of perspectives. The Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies is the first and only academic institution of its kind — dedicated to research and teaching about the historical and cultural experiences of the global Iranian diaspora. The Center prepares a new generation of policy makers, business leaders, artists and cultural ambassadors to effectively understand and engage with people of Iranian heritage. The Center serves as a unique and valuable academic and cultural resource providing an innovative approach to the study of and research about Iranian diasporas and their impact on the Iranian identity.

Featuring work by Shiva Ahmadi, Sholeh Asgary, Shaghayegh Cyrous, Ala Ebtekar, Mitra Fabian, Anahita Hekmat, Kaveh Irani, Pantea Karimi, Shirin Khalatbari, Behnaz Khaleghi, Sanaz Mazinani, Mazinani/Mazinani, Nasim Moghadam, Golbanou Moghaddas, Azin Seraj, Keyvan Shovir, Cyrus Yoshi Tabar, Taravat Talepasand, Shirin Towfiq, and Shadi Yousefian.

Curated by Kevin B. Chen and Taraneh Hemami.

Opening reception: Saturday March 30th | 6-8 pm
Performance by Hushidar Mortezaie and music performance by Mohsen Namjoo from 8pm–9pm

2019 marks the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution and with it a major cultural shift inside of the country with the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The revolution and its aftermath — including the 8-year Iran-Iraq war — has subsequently lead to over three million Iranians migrating to the West with the largest populations residing in the U.S., and half of the nation's Iranians residing in California. The Bay Area has been home to an active community for over 40 years, establishing themselves in all sectors of society from politics to the arts. More recently the Bay Area has welcomed another wave of Iranian migrants following the easing of U.S. visas in the aftermath of the disputed 2009 elections in Iran. They include professionals in every field, especially many engineers recruited by Silicon Valley, and a large number of artists and cultural producers with the promise to further enrich the Bay Area arts communities as well as one of the most culturally vibrant Iranian communities outside of Iran.

Once at Present marks this historic occasion with a multi-disciplinary exhibition and programming that further explore and convey the multi-faceted implications of cultural diaspora through the perspective of a new generation of Iranian artists creating in the Bay Area now. Tackling broad issues of migration, memory, identity and labor, the works in this exhibition present a rich diversity of practices that inform, question and expand the notions of belonging while examining ways of being and becoming part of the Iranian Diaspora.

The exhibition is organized with the sponsorship of the newly formed Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University and in conjunction with the first International Conference on Iranian Diaspora Studies, Forty Years and More, hosted by SFSU (March 28-30, 2019). Conference presentations in the arts, humanities, and social sciences will offer new scholarship and research about the Iranian diaspora from a variety of perspectives. The Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies is the first and only academic institution of its kind — dedicated to research and teaching about the historical and cultural experiences of the global Iranian diaspora. The Center prepares a new generation of policy makers, business leaders, artists and cultural ambassadors to effectively understand and engage with people of Iranian heritage. The Center serves as a unique and valuable academic and cultural resource providing an innovative approach to the study of and research about Iranian diasporas and their impact on the Iranian identity.

Featuring work by Shiva Ahmadi, Sholeh Asgary, Shaghayegh Cyrous, Ala Ebtekar, Mitra Fabian, Anahita Hekmat, Kaveh Irani, Pantea Karimi, Shirin Khalatbari, Behnaz Khaleghi, Sanaz Mazinani, Mazinani/Mazinani, Nasim Moghadam, Golbanou Moghaddas, Azin Seraj, Keyvan Shovir, Cyrus Yoshi Tabar, Taravat Talepasand, Shirin Towfiq, and Shadi Yousefian.

Curated by Kevin B. Chen and Taraneh Hemami.

Zevitas Marcus Gallery

BETA PICTORIS GALLERY BIRMINGHAM, AL

AZADI VA EDALAT: STORIES RETOLD BY CONTEMPORARY IRANIAN WOMEN ARTISTS

OGLEHTORPE UNIVERSITY ATLANTA, GA

Azadi va Edalat (transliteration from the Persian for freedom and justice) is organized by OUMA Director Elizabeth Peterson, in partnership with artist and curator Afarin Rahmanifar.

The paintings of Rahmanifar are accompanied by those of Taravat Talepasand and Samira Abbassyto show three contemporary interpretations of traditional Persian painting and storytelling

ANGLES GALLERY LOS ANGELES, CA

Alida Cervantes, Marlene Dumas, Nicole Eisenman, Junghwa Hong, Wangechi Mutu,
Felicita Norris, Connie Samaras, Cindy Sherman, Linda Stark, Taravat Talepasand,
Katherine Vetne. Kara Walker, Lisa Yuskavage.

Angles Gallery is very pleased to present Hidden and Revealed: Representations of Women by Women, a group exhibition that will examine the representation of women in society, the media, and art. This group exhibition is comprised of paintings, photographs, and works on paper by 13 women from North America, Africa, and Asia.

Collectively, the artists consider colonial, racial, religious, patriarchal, and class influences on the determination of power relations and control. Various forms of gender violence, repression, sexuality, body image, visibility, identity, and community are revealed, in the process of considering the historical impulse to place anything that is desired or despised onto the female body.

ANGLES GALLERY LOS ANGELES, CA

Matt lifson, Bett Reichman, Tony de los Reyes, Taravat Talepasand.

Angles Gallery is proud to announce our representation of four new artists and welcome them to the gallery program. Each of them will be having a one-person exhibition at the gallery in the coming year.

A group exhibition of works by these talented emerging and mid-career artists will open to the public on Saturday, June 29. The exhibition remains on view through August during regular gallery hours.

Matt Lifson is a graduate of Otis College of Art and Design, MFA 2012, andSchool of Visual Arts, New York, BFA 2008. His works have been exhibited at SecondGuest and Ana Cristea Gallery, NY and CB1 Gallery, Los Angeles. His first one- person exhibition with the gallery will be in the fall.

Brett Reichman holds a MFA degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BFA degree from Carnegie Mellon University. He has been in one person and group exhibitions nationally, including Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco; PPOW Gallery, New York; Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco; Feature, New York; Orange County Museum of Art (solo); SFMoMA; Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Berkeley Art Museum; and The Drawing Center. His works are in the collections of SFMoMA, OCMA, PAM, Berkeley Art Museum, and the Oakland Museum of California Art. His first one-person show with the gallery will be in 2014.

Tony de los Reyes graduated San Francisco Art Institute, MFA and California State University, Northridge, BFA. A 2011 recipient of the prestigious C.O.L.A. award, his works have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Venues include New Britain Museum of American Art; Grand Central Art Center; DCKT Contemporary; Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College; Weatherspoon Art Museum; and Vincent Price Museum. He was the recipient of the California Community Foundation Mid-Career Artist Fellowship in 2011. His first one-person exhibition with the gallery will be in 2014.

 Taravat Talepasand earned her MFA at San Francisco Art Institute (2006) and BFA at Rhode Island school of Design (2001). Recipient of the Richard Diebenkorn Fellowship in 2010, her works are in the permanent collections of the de Young Museum and Orange County Museum of Art. Exhibitions include the 2010 California Biennial, OCMA; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Morgan Lehman, New York; and Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon. Her first one-person exhibition with the gallery will be in 2014.

Angles Gallery is located at 2754 S. La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 AM to 6 PM. 

MARX & ZAVATTERO GALLERY SAN FRANCISCO, CA

In Situation Critical, Iranian-American artist Taravat Talepasand’s second solo exhibition at Marx & Zavattero, the conflict of the artist’s attempt
at resolution between east and west in her own self – as well as the present political situation in Iran – collide to inspire a new body of work that is
highly charged and personal. On view will be a series of new egg tempera on panel paintings, graphite drawings, and a hand-painted MB5 motorcycle
that represent the artist’s fresh interpretation of the still life and portrait genre.