May 18 - July 1, 2023, Tuesday - Saturday, 10am - 5:30pm; Reception for the artist Thursday, May 18, 6-8pm
On September 16, 2022, Mahsa Amini was beaten to death in Tehran. Detained on the road and separated from her family, she was tortured and killed by the Gasht-e-Ershad, Iran's morality police. Her crime? Improperly wearing the hijab, exposing her hair. Within hours, protesters had filled the streets of Tehran and many other cities.
Seven thousand miles away in San Jose, the Iranian-American painter Sameh Khalatbari watched the news on television. As a woman who'd been forced to cover her hair before emigrating to the United States, she felt intense distress. She nervously sketched as she stared at the TV. When she looked down at the iPad resting in her lap, she found that she'd drawn hundreds of lines.
"I felt a responsibility to be the voice of the people in Iran and to spread the word with my art," she recalls. "But I couldn't be direct. I still have family there. When I visit, I could be arrested." Her art could not be figurative, as it had been in the past. "I thought of using the lines I'd drawn as a symbol of women's hair."
Modernism is pleased to present a selection of 12 works from the series Khalatbari created in response to Amini's murder and the ongoing conditions of gender apartheid in Iran. "1401 N/m2 Resistance" takes its name from the year of the protests according to Iran's Solar Hijri calendar and the metric unit of pressure. "Resistance alone could not express the magnitude of the event," Khalatbari explains.
To embody her ideas and express the intensity of her feelings, she developed an entirely new technique. In the past, Khalatbari had always painted in acrylic on prepared canvases. For the new body of work, she worked with string, which she extended across canvas she stretched herself. For many artists, abstraction and politics would be in tension. Khalatbari balances them as meticulously and elegantly as a mathematical equation.
THE PUBLIC IS INVITED TO AN OPENING RECEPTION
ON THURSDAY, MAY 18TH FROM 6:00-8:00PM
Free
Presented by MODERNISM INC..
show less
On September 16, 2022, Mahsa Amini was beaten to death in Tehran. Detained on the road and separated from her family, she was tortured and killed by the Gasht-e-Ershad, Iran's morality police. Her crime? Improperly wearing the hijab, exposing her hair. Within hours, protesters had filled the streets of Tehran and many other cities.
Seven thousand miles away in San Jose, the Iranian-American painter Sameh Khalatbari watched the news on television. As a woman who'd been forced to cover her hair before emigrating to the United States, she felt intense distress. She nervously sketched as she stared at the TV. When she looked down at the iPad resting in her lap, she found that she'd drawn hundreds of lines.
"I felt a responsibility to be the voice of the people in Iran and to spread the word with my art," she recalls. "But I couldn't be direct. I still have family there. When I visit, I could be arrested." Her art could not be figurative, as it had been in the past. "I thought of using the lines I'd drawn as a symbol of women's hair."
Modernism is pleased to present a selection of 12 works from the series Khalatbari created in response to Amini's murder and the ongoing conditions of gender apartheid in Iran. "1401 N/m2 Resistance" takes its name from the year of the protests according to Iran's Solar Hijri calendar and the metric unit of pressure. "Resistance alone could not express the magnitude of the event," Khalatbari explains.
To embody her ideas and express the intensity of her feelings, she developed an entirely new technique. In the past, Khalatbari had always painted in acrylic on prepared canvases. For the new body of work, she worked with string, which she extended across canvas she stretched herself. For many artists, abstraction and politics would be in tension. Khalatbari balances them as meticulously and elegantly as a mathematical equation.
THE PUBLIC IS INVITED TO AN OPENING RECEPTION
ON THURSDAY, MAY 18TH FROM 6:00-8:00PM
Free
Presented by MODERNISM INC..
May 18 - July 1, 2023, Tuesday - Saturday, 10am - 5:30pm; Reception for the artist Thursday, May 18, 6-8pm
On September 16, 2022, Mahsa Amini was beaten to death in Tehran. Detained on the road and separated from her family, she was tortured and killed by the Gasht-e-Ershad, Iran's morality police. Her crime? Improperly wearing the hijab, exposing her hair. Within hours, protesters had filled the streets of Tehran and many other cities.
Seven thousand miles away in San Jose, the Iranian-American painter Sameh Khalatbari watched the news on television. As a woman who'd been forced to cover her hair before emigrating to the United States, she felt intense distress. She nervously sketched as she stared at the TV. When she looked down at the iPad resting in her lap, she found that she'd drawn hundreds of lines.
"I felt a responsibility to be the voice of the people in Iran and to spread the word with my art," she recalls. "But I couldn't be direct. I still have family there. When I visit, I could be arrested." Her art could not be figurative, as it had been in the past. "I thought of using the lines I'd drawn as a symbol of women's hair."
Modernism is pleased to present a selection of 12 works from the series Khalatbari created in response to Amini's murder and the ongoing conditions of gender apartheid in Iran. "1401 N/m2 Resistance" takes its name from the year of the protests according to Iran's Solar Hijri calendar and the metric unit of pressure. "Resistance alone could not express the magnitude of the event," Khalatbari explains.
To embody her ideas and express the intensity of her feelings, she developed an entirely new technique. In the past, Khalatbari had always painted in acrylic on prepared canvases. For the new body of work, she worked with string, which she extended across canvas she stretched herself. For many artists, abstraction and politics would be in tension. Khalatbari balances them as meticulously and elegantly as a mathematical equation.
THE PUBLIC IS INVITED TO AN OPENING RECEPTION
ON THURSDAY, MAY 18TH FROM 6:00-8:00PM
Free
Presented by MODERNISM INC..
read more
On September 16, 2022, Mahsa Amini was beaten to death in Tehran. Detained on the road and separated from her family, she was tortured and killed by the Gasht-e-Ershad, Iran's morality police. Her crime? Improperly wearing the hijab, exposing her hair. Within hours, protesters had filled the streets of Tehran and many other cities.
Seven thousand miles away in San Jose, the Iranian-American painter Sameh Khalatbari watched the news on television. As a woman who'd been forced to cover her hair before emigrating to the United States, she felt intense distress. She nervously sketched as she stared at the TV. When she looked down at the iPad resting in her lap, she found that she'd drawn hundreds of lines.
"I felt a responsibility to be the voice of the people in Iran and to spread the word with my art," she recalls. "But I couldn't be direct. I still have family there. When I visit, I could be arrested." Her art could not be figurative, as it had been in the past. "I thought of using the lines I'd drawn as a symbol of women's hair."
Modernism is pleased to present a selection of 12 works from the series Khalatbari created in response to Amini's murder and the ongoing conditions of gender apartheid in Iran. "1401 N/m2 Resistance" takes its name from the year of the protests according to Iran's Solar Hijri calendar and the metric unit of pressure. "Resistance alone could not express the magnitude of the event," Khalatbari explains.
To embody her ideas and express the intensity of her feelings, she developed an entirely new technique. In the past, Khalatbari had always painted in acrylic on prepared canvases. For the new body of work, she worked with string, which she extended across canvas she stretched herself. For many artists, abstraction and politics would be in tension. Khalatbari balances them as meticulously and elegantly as a mathematical equation.
THE PUBLIC IS INVITED TO AN OPENING RECEPTION
ON THURSDAY, MAY 18TH FROM 6:00-8:00PM
Free
Presented by MODERNISM INC..
show less
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MODERNISM INC.
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724 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA 94121
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