Preview: 1st & 2nd March 2023 (by invitaiton only)
The Third Line is pleased to announce its participation in the 16th edition of Art Dubai, returning this year with two solo presentations. Laleh Khorramian will debut a series of new paintings and mixed media works in Art Dubai Contemporary, and a kaleidoscope of seminal works by celebrated Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian will be on view at Art Dubai Modern, which is co-curated by Mouna Mekouar and Lorenzo Giusti.
Laleh Khorramian (b. 1974 Tehran, Iran) presents a hall of small paintings: oil on panel and linen works flanking one side of the booth, and stretched mixed media fabric works on the other. Holding court at the centre is Mother of Glass (2021), which was first exhibited at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art as part of The Vasseur Baltic Artists’ Award 2022. This totem-like banner of a central woman figure, the symbolic muse to this body of work.
In Mother of Glass, the shape of a woman in a dress emerges from a fractured surface resembling stained glass, a medium of reflection, transparency and transcendency. Her facelessness is sourced from a haunting recurring figure in the artist’s dreams. She holds the room – a sarcophagus of sublimation, a dream figure reincarnated in female form. Unattainable, mysterious, yet self-possessed. The matriarch is found in the temple of her skirts, both mother and muse in constant transformation.
The suite of small paintings exists in a state of rotation around the command of her femininity. Each piece is layered with the mercurial methodologies of Khorramian’s practice – from oil to fabric, carving to stitching. Paramount is the artist's hand; her paintings are rendered with exquisite detail and depth, and her sewn compositions are collages of painted fabrics with stencilled patterns and found textures. All of the works touch on both abstraction and surrealism, the effect of which is both haunting and transportative.
For over half a century, the practice of the late Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (b. 1922 Qazvin, Iran, d. 2019 Tehran, Iran) has incorporated principles of Islamic geometry with a contemporary sensibility. Blending the characteristics of ornamentation found in Iranian architecture with the aesthetics of modern and abstract expressionism,Farmanfarmaian’s unconventional mélange of past and present has resulted in an oeuvre that spans many mediums. The presentation will reflect upon these different facets and materials of her geometric practice, and will feature a range of drawings, carpets, and iconic mirror works to demonstrate the depth of Farmanfarmaian’s conceptual consideration throughout her career and medium.
Farmanfarmaian is best known for her mirror mosaic sculptural works, whereby fragments of reverse-painted, reflective glass are arranged into compositions that reflect Islamic geometry. Derived from the Iranian decorative technique aineh-kari, which dates back to the sixteenth century, the artist pushes beyond the craft to explore the forms of the medium and experiment with the infinite possibilities of creation the geometrical forms allow her.
Farmanfarmaian carries these same principles into her works on paper and textile. The drawings presented at Art Dubai this year are some of her earlier works from the 1990s that were produced while the artist was in exile in New York, following the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. These works on paper are notably whimsical in nature, and many of which became prototypes for carpets that were made by hand in Tabriz and Bijar, Iran. These wool and naturally dyed silk carpets present a unique insight into her experiments in material.
