"Everything in Between" Morehshin Allahyari

The Verge Gallery, S and 7th Streets

Last weekend I made the short trip to the Verge Center for the Arts to see Morehshin Allahyari's exhibition Everything in Between.  The works, collectively a meditation on the specific and complex identity of being an Iranian woman, raises questions about how technology binds us and can simultaneously set us free.

In one portion of the show, Allahyari produces a series of statues from Persian antiquity, that have been reproduced using 3D scanning and printing technology.  The twelve works, entitled Material Speculation: ISIS, are all pieces that were destroyed by ISIS in 2015.  Embedded in each work is a flash drive containing critical archaeological and physical details of each reproduced work of art. These works are make a powerful statement of protest about attempts to distort the past and manipulate culture to fit the conservative Islamic agenda of ISIS.  

Material Speculation: ISIS Morehshin Allahyari 2015-2016

In Mere Spaces All Things Are Side by Side I  2014 -Present

One of the most moving works is a short animated film called In Mere Spaces All Things Are Side by Side I that sets a conversation the artist had on Yahoo Chat with an online pen pal against 3D modeled architecture. Through the dialogue, we gain a poignant insight into the difficulty a person has using the internet in heavily censored Iran.  I remember being a gay teenager in the early 2000's and having the experience here in northern California. I lived in a world where I felt completely cut off and isolated from the world around me. Had it been ten years before, I would have had no online outlet to channel who I really was. I wouldn't have had the validation of chatting with other gay or lesbian people online or even seeing gay pornography that at least allowed me to recognize that I wasn't alone in my feelings. The internet was a form of social salvation.   I believe that Allahyari had a similar experience.

Other works that utilize 3D printing are works of banned images in Iran. This includes dogs (which are banned in Iran and the ownership of which incurs a sentence of 74 lashes), pigs, Buddha, and Homer Simpson.  These works playfully and purposefully create digital assemblages of these banned objects, raising awareness of cumbersome and futile censorship imposed by the Iranian government.  

Dark Matter; First Series 2014