Arbitrary Lines

Events, Exhibitions
December 17, 2020

Oct 29, 2020 – Jan 11, 2021

Curated by Amirali Ghasemi

Part one

Oct 29, 2020 – Nov 21, 2020

Nebras Hoveizavi | Sanaz Sohrabi | Sona Safaei-Sooreh

OPENING I: Oct 28, 2020 – 7pm

“Arbitrary Lines” is a project by New Media Society – Tehran and Parking Video Library, which gathers seven lens-based artists who live around the globe. Their unique approaches and research-based, one by one, question mass media, representations of the other, and the silent process of marginalization via micro/macro narratives where the boundaries of intimate stories and personal spaces blur with the manifestations of the socio-political. Using various resources from print media, found-footage, and testimonies in public archives to collage and 3D models inspired by advertisements, their multifaceted perspectives reflect fragmented realities and fables, simultaneously. Most importantly, their cameras dare to capture the vague and elusive lines of segregation and normalization. Hence, the ambiguity within those imaginaries allows them to bypass the nostalgia loops and reveal the vulnerability of the system at the same time.

Part Two

December 16 – January 11, 2021

Sara Abbasnejad | Anahita Hekmat | Jaleh Nesari | Negar Yaghmaeian

OPENING 2: December 16

The second part of the exhibition has invited four artists – Sara Abbasnejad, Negar Yaghmaeian, Anahita Hekmat, and Jaleh Nesari. Their visual poetry and peculiar observations utter a range of concerns: Daily life and the delicate line between childhood and adolescence, displayed through a gender-aware lens of Sara Abbasnejad. Intimate/mind space emerges in the space between the home and its greenhouse for Anahita Hekmat’s video combining the past of the present and the imagined future of the past. The geographical boundaries that once were crucial for human growth are now changing at an unbelievable pace. Local cross-border shipping that had always cast its shadows on human mobility and survival from one generation to another is now at stake as a result of the large ocean-going vessels. Negar Yaghmaeian’s The Smell of Earth and Tree gathers photographs, maps, and other treasured possessions to reimagine these stories, many of which remain untold. Rendered via found footage under the #earthsound hashtag, Jaleh Nesari’s piece on the future of the blue planet appears more and more frightening as its residents are getting aware of their imposed irreversible manipulations, while their so-called environmental activism often contradict with their lifestyle and the way their artistic interpretations portray/address the crisis. The drawn lines -growing and fading, coming near and moving away- have turned into personal, organic, entertaining and frightening imagery: Rare traces which are captured in frames.