News

The 36th Parallel

Curated by Beth Davila Waldman, August 12- Sepetemer 9, 2023. Closing reception Saturday, September9th 6-9pm. Participating Artists: Ellen Driscoll, Uma Rani Lyli, Liz Miller Kovacs, Katie Murken, Alex H. Nichols, Beth Davila Waldman, Minoosh Zomorodinia.

MORPHOLOGIES

Lucas Artists Fellowship 2023

EARTH, Palo Alto Art Center, CA

June 24- August 19, 2023

Featuring the work of 34 artists from throughout Northern California, the exhibition showcases a broad range of artistic responses to the earth, through work in photography, painting, installation, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, and digital media.

MINOOSH ZOMORODINIA | PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY: IMPERFECT CARTOGRAPHIES

Open to public March 30- June 30, 2023

Donated a piece for Annual Benefit Art Auction at Southern Exposure gallery April 29, 2023

Silver Town Society 2021

Creatures in Silver Town Society will be going to Bioneers Conference April 6-8 2023

500 Capp Street Benefit Auction

September 26, 2022 7:00 am – October 14, 2022 12:00 pm

The David Ireland House, Capp Street, San Francisco, CA, USA

Annual Benefit Art Auction

Thursday, October 20, 2022

The Traveling Tapchan: Between Lands Edition

Friday, June 17, 2022
5:00 – 7:00 PM     

The Traveling Tapchan is a space where visitors can engage in public displays of leisure. Throughout the run of Between Lands, visitors will be invited to relax, recline, and watch Annie Albagli’s projected video, All We Found Were the Tales. Additionally, the Tapchan will host two public events to discuss our embodied experiences of air pollution, its effects on our bodies and our surrounding environment, and ways we can protect our bodies and communities from the long term effects of wildfire smoke. We will gather outside Southern Exposure to serve tea and specific foods that contain vitamins to curtail the long term effects of air pollution.

The Traveling Tapchan: Between Lands Edition will share foods from landscapes evoked throughout the exhibition. It will ask viewers to think about their breath in relation to place, including viewers’ homelands and the landscapes cited in the exhibition. How can we build compassion through our shared experience of air pollution across different locations? What are the systems that directly impact the air we breathe? This edition will ask us to create bridges between locations using awareness of our breath, memories, and the politics of air across town, state, and country. We will think about how air moves beyond borders and the arbitrary delineations of a nation, when air defies territory. The event will take place outside the gallery for everyone’s safety.

Between Lands

Exhibition Dates
May 14–June 18, 2022

Opening 5:00 pm 7:00 pm May14, 2022

Parformance 5:30 pm- 6:00 pm

Between Lands features the work of ten Iranian and US-based artists who offer new perspectives on the notion of place and examine our relationships to landscape through the lens of personal and collective histories. The artists chosen for this show consider our attachments and anxieties in relationship to land and home when there is a loss caused by war, fire, displacement, or other disaster. How does eco-anxiety or displacement shift perceptions of our own place in the world? How do technology and virtual space impact our perceptions of place? For many living in the US, particularly immigrants from Iran, the American political landscape has made it challenging to both visit one’s family and created an amplified sense of alienation from one’s chosen home. Having left unlivable places, the artists in Between Lands live in an uncertain, liminal space between countries. Between Lands considers the fraught relationships many of us have to place and home at a moment when politics and climate change are shifting the ground that we stand on.

Between Lands is curated by Minoosh Zomorodinia and includes work by Annie Albagli, Samira Davarfara, Emsaki S., Raheleh Filsoofi, Tara Goudarzi, Anahita Hekmat Atefeh Khas, and Kalaktive (Bahareh Khoshooee & Sareh Imani).

ECO ART SYMPOSIUM

CELEBRATING EARTH DAY 2022

Saturday April 23, 2022 9:30am – 4:30pm PDT

San Francisco Art Institute
800 Chestnut St, San Francisco, CA 94133

Pathways

Exhibition Dates
March 4–April 1, 2022

Receptions
March 4 and April 1, 6–9 pm

Gallery Talks
March 5: José Arenas, Caroline Landau, Melissa West, Carolina Cuevas (performance)
March 12: Casey Jay Gardner, Kent Manske
March 19: Afatasi the Artist, Carolina Cuevas (performance), Neil Murphy
March 26: Minoosh Zomorodinia, Nanette Wylde

Catalog Available: publishing.hungerbutton.org

For more information: Pathways exhibition page

Venue
Art Ark Gallery
 1035 South 6th Street, San Jose, California www.artarkgallery.com
Art Ark Gallery is a participant of SoFF: South First Fridays Art Walk

A Between

Root Division Gallery Feb 24-March 23

Join us this March for A Between, curated by MUZThis exhibition highlights the varied connections that we have with our environments and imagines new frameworks for understanding the personal and social in relation to place. As we increasingly enter into each other’s homes and private lives through virtual realms, the boundaries between public and private have disintegrated and compressed. Many artists within the exhibition work to carve out digital and virtual spaces that connect disparate environments or familial pasts, while others recall distant memories, or examine the conditions of survival.

EXHIBITING ARTISTS

Brian Bartz, Jillian Crochet, Claudia Huenchuleo Paquien, Juke Jose, Heesoo Kwon, Charles Lee, Jenna Meacham, Miguel Novelo, Nicole Shaffer, Ebtihal Shedid, Consuelo Tupper Hernández, Hannah Waiters, Victor Yañez-Lazcano, Minoosh Zomorodinia

Counter Mapping

516 ARTS presents Counter Mapping, a group exhibition and series of public programs focusing on map-related artworks by 14 local, national, and international artists and art collectives. Co-curated by Viola Arduini and Jim Enote (Zuni Pueblo), the exhibition engages with geography, identity, politics, and the environment through painting, sculpture, photography, video, and installation. “Counter mapping” is a practice of mapping against dominant power structures to reclaim stories and memories of place.

This exhibition is inspired in part by Jim Enote’s work on a counter mapping project he led for the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center at Zuni Pueblo, where he invited several Zuni artists to create maps of the region from a Zuni perspective. He says “It has been said by many that more lands have been lost to Native people through mapping than through physical conflicts.”

Counter Mapping springs from a time when maps have acquired a central presence in our lives. From election maps, to color-coded data collection on the Covid-19 pandemic, maps have become a familiar and often contested visual language. The exhibition challenges the common idea of maps as objective and universal tools for geographical knowledge. Conventional Western mapping has been historically used to track, register, and achieve land exploitation. Today, with processes such as gerrymandering, mapping performs an important role in political, social, and cultural systems. This exhibition investigates how different ways of tracking and mapping affect the meanings and perceptions of places, and reflect upon the power structures that define those views.

The co-curators of Counter Mapping examine diverging approaches to mapping from their own experiences – Jim Enote as an Indigenous leader, activist and farmer, and Viola Arduini as an immigrant and educator.

Untitled Art, Miami Beach 2021

Three Turns Miami, part of Special Projects Untitled Art

Going to the Meadow  

ArtYard Art Residency 

Curated by Robin Hill and Ulla Warchol / Biolunar

ArtYard is pleased to present Going to the Meadow, a living exhibition curated by Robin Hill and Ulla Warchol / Biolunar.

Artists: Lisa Rybovich Crallé, SHENEQUA, Iris Cushing, Shayok Mukhopadhyay, Ramekon O’Arwisters, Hannah Chalew, Joanne Douglas, Andrew Sullivan, Carmen Argote, Milcah Bassel, Angela Willetts, Yvonne Shortt, Anna Mayer, Sophia Wang, Dahlia Elsayed, Minoosh Zomorodinia

Auction 2021 | Thursday, October 21

Recology exhibition for Minoosh Zomorodinia and Leilah Talukder

About this event

The Artist in Residence Program at Recology San Francisco is thrilled to announce exhibition dates for current artists-in-residence Minoosh Zomorodinia and Leilah Talukder.

Friday, October 8, from 4:30-7:30pm

Saturday, October 9, from 12-3pm

01/04/2018, 00:20 0.44mi 32’14.6 73’43/mi

All that you touch: art and ecology 

Thacher Gallery Sept 7- Nov 7, 2021

The Listening Biennial

Walkshop at The Listening Biennial

1983 studio, Hong Kong

Artist in Residence at Recology

July- September 2021

Opening on September 24th

MADE LANDS

May 1st, 2021 1-5pm 

Local Language, Artist Residency, Oakland, CA

While walking in different environments, Minoosh Zomorodinia documents her explorations and records the routes of her walks on land that does not belong to her. She began this walking project in 2016 when the immigration policy was on the precipice of change and she was in the process of changing her visa status. The work playfully and humorously referenced the colonization and origin of the United States. Zomorodinia turned the paths into 3D objects as if they are imaginary living spaces and subsequently owns the “land,” both virtually using a GPS app on her phone, and through the object she produced. 

 In the new series, My Ziggurat, Zomorodinia re-forms and reshapes the borders, while referencing historical monuments and the memory from the spaces and land in the digital age. She turns these routes into monumental forms based on the outline of her paths to represent topography in the digital age. The abstracted natural imagery is printed on leftover layers with the texture from the actual location. The printed images transform perceptions of the natural environment in the new media age. Zomorodinia is interested in how technology forms memory through digital archiving, transforming invisible routes that exist as a memory into actual objects in abstract form, is there any limitation? How will the history of a place exist in the future?

After Hope: Videos of Resistance

After Hope: Videos of Resistance is an exploration of the expressions and legacies of hope within contemporary art. The exhibition consists of more than fifty short, single-channel videos, drawn from recommendations by artists, curators, and organizations across the world. The result is a six-hour looping chronicle of hope that is eclectic in nature, rather than unified by a single narrative.

SFAI 150 | A Spirit of Disruption showcases a selection of works and archival materials that celebrate the ethos and expansive ecosystem of the San Francisco Art Institute. As the title suggests, the exhibition disrupts the bias present in the history of many arts institutions across the Bay Area, and the proclivity to preserve and celebrate an art world that has been predominantly white and male. With careful examination of this history and a breadth of perspectives, the exhibition illuminates the distinct and diverse voices of SFAI which includes alumni, faculty, staff, and the community who have made an enormous contribution to its legendary history. This 150th anniversary marks a beginning for yet another era at SFAI, one that aspires to deepen and grow a more inclusive support for the kind of work that continues to disrupt.

A Spirit of Disruption embraces time; past, present, and future.

VR Art Camp SHOW & TELL

March 28, 2021 10-11:30am PST // 6-7:30pm CET

Quinn Keck, Lia Sutton and Minoosh Zomorodinia

Experience being in a virtual art piece while engaging in a conversation with the artist!

Resident artists give a 20 min tour in their VR studios that they’ve built during their residency. Please join our Show & Tell in the Art Camp Commons in Mozilla Hubs*!

Art Camp is a homesome virtual art residency and gathering, an alternative to our many missing social events. Womxn and underrepresented artists investigate the possibilities of creating and inhabiting a communal place with care, that is accessible both on a browser and in virtual reality. The residency accumulates in the Show & Tell on the last Sundays of every second month.

Recalled to Nature

Tue, March 2, 2021
5:00 PM – 6:15 PM PST

The Recology Artist in Residence (AIR) Program is pleased to announce in collaboration with Saddleback College the second panel in our series, RECOLOGY AIR CONNECTS, focused on rotating themes that connect artists and ideas.

Titled after Saddleback College’s upcoming virtual exhibition of work made at Recology curated by former AIR artist, Barbara Holmes, the panel “Recalled to Nature” brings together three vibrant voices from the Bay Area: Mark Baugh-Sasaki, Alicia Escott, and Minoosh Zomorodinia. In conversation with our moderators, Barbara Holmes and Victor Yañez-Lazcano, the artists will discuss how they use art to explore the intersection of our social, political, and historical relationships to nature.

This event will also stream live on our YouTube Channel

TRACES

Featuring the artwork of Members of the Women Eco Artists Dialog (WEAD)
Virtual Exhibition Dates: January 14 – March 12, 2021

View this exhibit in the virtual tour of the gallery

SFAI TOWER + ONLINE

January 22, 23 and 24, 2021

Every night starting at 7:00pm, PST

San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) and SF Artists Alumni (SFAA) proudly present Three Turns, a juried exhibition of video works by SFAI alumni artists. Featuring 26 artists, Three Turns stems from the concept that engaging artworks provide a viewer with three different entry points, prompting a deeper exploration into the work itself. Projected on the historic SFAI Tower at 800 Chestnut Street, which houses the Institution’s 150 year old archive, Three Turns will echo the notion of traveling three turns in time and space by showing the selected alumni video works on the Tower in dialogue with video works selected from the SFAI archive.

Archive works were selected by Margaret Tedesco and Leila Weefur, curators of the upcoming 150th anniversary exhibition Spirit of Disruption, and include: Nao Bustamante’s Untitled #1 (from the series “Earth People 2507”), Yin-Ju Chen’s Three Decades of Static, and Steven Arnold’s 1967 work The Liberation of Mannique Mechanique. 

Each night, each rotation of works will be looped, and the evening will include brief programming highlighting artists and jurors participating in the exhibition. 

Panel Discussion

Starting at 7:30pm PST, SFAA Exhibitions & Programming Lead Beth Waldman will lead a brief Zoom based panel discussion with guests Juror Minoosh Zomorodinia & Film Archive Artist Yin-Ju Chen as part of the Three Turns event available on live stream to watch as well as Zoom to chime into the conversation. An encore filming of Three Turns will follow the discussion.

Watch all nights here

MUZ Collective’s artists’ postcard project

I’m happy to have a piece in the new artists’ postcard set curated and produced by MUZ Collective. You can order a set by DMing them via Instagram (linked). Proceeds go toward Oakland People’s Breakfast and Hotels Not Graves. The full set, printed by Colpa Press, features work by 29 artists; 

Libby Black, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Kevin Chen, Joe Ferriso, Claudia Huenchuleo Paquien, Nathan Kosta, Heesoo Kwon, Kija Lucas, Alicia McCarthy, Jenna Meacham, Gabby Miller, Keisha Mrotek, Natani Notah, Brion Nuda Rosch, Leonard Reidelbach, Kate Rhoades, Sherwin Rio, Leslie Samson-Tabakin, Nicole Shaffer, Owen Takabayashi, Weston Teruya, Hannah Tuck, The Bureau of Linguistal Reality, Raphael Villet, Hannah Waiters, Kristen Wong, Victor Yañez-Lazcano, Livien Yin, Minoosh Zomorodinia

The Imminent Arrival

Curator: Katya Grokhovsky

Curatorial Advisors: Mary Annunziata, Allison Cannella, Anna Mikaela Ekstrand 

October 16th 2020 – December 18th 2020

Artists: Bianca Abdi-Boragi, Shay Arick, Irja Bodén, Federico Cuatlacuatl, Firoz Mahmud, Abena Motaboli, Rehab El Sadek, Buket SAVCI, Joo Yeon Woo, Minoosh Zomorodinia

19th Annual Benfit Art Auction

I have donated 3 pieces to the 19th annual benefit Art Acution at Root Division. Check out the catalog here to bid. Register for the live event on October 22, 2020.

The Archive to Come: 

An exhibition of short, time-based works
On-line, In Social VR, and In the Gallery

October 22nd – December 17th, 2020

Opening Reception: Thursday, October 22nd, 4:00 – 7:00pm [PDT]

In social VR at: https://hubs.mozilla.com/BRLaDhW/archive-gallery

As an outgrowth of Carla Gannis’ wwwunderkammer, Telematic Media Arts is pleased to present, The Archive to Come, an exhibition – both on-line and in the gallery – of short time-based works that address questions of loss, memorialization, crisis, and re-invention, through the lens of contemporary networked culture and digital media.

The current crises we confront raise fundamental questions about what we value and want to preserve as we work to recover from their ravages and build for the future.  How will we memorialize those whose lives have been lost?  What could do justice to the fact that so many have died needlessly, as a result of government inaction and political maneuvering, or worse, as victims of racist terror and state violence?  How can we redress the unequal distribution of suffering and work to dismantle systems of oppression?  What histories demand to be foregrounded and what legacies should be left behind? What have we carried with us as we’ve withdrawn into isolation and emerged in protest? What are the sources of precariousness and resilience in our personal and collective constitutions?  What kinds of work do we honor as essential?  What do we need to preserve our sense of well-being?  What novel modes being and relating have we developed to maintain our social connections?  What do we hope for the future? 

These are questions of the archive, which both founds and sustains the authority of discourses, institutions, and practices. They concern the construction of memory, knowledge, experience, and power; and they present themselves now, amidst these crises, as both problems and possibilities: revelations of the previously unconscious contradictions in our way of doing things, as well as opportunities to re-orient our attunement to the world.

Carla Gannis’ wwwunderkammer appeals to the 16th – Century “Cabinets of Curiosity” to consider the uncanny complications of grounded reality and virtual reality, nature and artifice, science and science fiction in contemporary digital culture, while building virtual worlds, founded upon de-colonizing, post-human, and feminist archives.  The Archive to Come, accordingly, opens these concerns to consideration by a broad field of other artists, inviting them to construct archives of their own, to reflect upon the correlative issues of historical trauma and displacement, and to consider how the digitalization of memory has changed the experience of what we remember – indeed, memory and experience themselves?

Quantified Selves: Vulnerable Bodies

Screening Artists: Dahn Gim 김단, Kelly Sun Kim 김선정, Armando Cortes 마르만도 콜테스, Minoosh Zomorodinia 미누쉬 조모로디니아, Mitra Saboury 미트라 사보리, Rachel Yezbick  레이첼 예즈빅, Lara Salmon 라라 살몬, Naoko Tasaka  나오코 타사카

@artspaceone

Fly to Tehran

October 27, 2020 8:00pm

A night conversation beyond borders! 

Emotional Numbness: The impact of war on the human psyche and ecosystems

WEAD, Women Eco Artists Dialog, working in collaboration with Platform 3, is pleased to announce Emotional Numbness: The impact of war on the human psyche and ecosystems.

This dual venue exhibition was curated by Atefeh Khas (Iran) and Minoosh Zomorodinia (USA). The physical exhibition takes place at Platform 3 in Tehran, Iran. WEAD will simultaneously host a companion online exhibition.

View the exhibition at Platform3 in Tehran

Women + Teaching + Trauma

In this third installation of MixTapes, SoEx Curatorial Councilmember and Artist Minoosh Zomorodinia DJs the internet for you with selections from online projects to sustaining texts to peripheral inspirations. Get to know her creative practices from these jumping off points.

Explore the linked tracks here

Tunnels of Mind

San Francisco Art Institute Marks 150th Anniversary with Video Art Projection in Times Square

San Francisco, CA, June 9, 2020 — San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), in association with ZAZ Corner, presents Tunnels of the Mind, a selection of 18 recent works by SFAI-affiliated artists, appearing on a Jumbotron in Times Square, New York City, starting at 7am on June 10th, 2020 and running through June 15, 2020 at midnight. In Tunnels of the Mind is the first in a year-long series of events marking SFAI’s 150th anniversary that will include programs and exhibitions presented in partnership with leading artists and arts organizations around the world. The dates, June 10 through 15 (10×15=150), were chosen in honor of SFAI’s 150-year anniversary.

Curated by SFAI Film Department Chair Orit Ben Shitrit, the selection of work reveals a vast diversity of forms and voices, a signature of SFAI’s highly personal and multi-disciplinary approach to art. Tunnels of the Mind spans distinct forms of moving image including, but not limited to: Structuralist Film, Video Art, Animation, Nonlinear Narrative, Detritus Cinema, Dance on Film, Computer Generated/ 3D, Experimental Film.

In Tunnels of the Mind, artists reveal their internal worlds: at once subversive, queer, extraterritorial, and otherworldly,” says Ben Shitrit. “Art can encourage empathy, and it is the highest form of hope. When our reality is devastating—with troubling racist killings and social inequality exacerbated by a pandemic—the imagination can offer a refuge and lead us to discover new possibilities.”

ZAZ Corner is a digital gallery showcasing artwork on a large LED billboard measuring 67 by 23.5 feet in the heart of Times Square in New York City. Located at the corner of 41st Street and 7th Avenue, the billboard features a digitally activated screen with a rotating series of images and videos that individually morph, bringing the art to life. This spring and summer, the ZAZ Corner theme is All About Us, featuring people, places, and contemporary interpretations and designs from artists around the world.

ZAZ Corner is presented by ZAZ 10 Times Square (ZAZ10TS) an ongoing cultural initiative that integrates art into the office building at 10 Times Square and its surroundings. ZAZ Corner aims to engage and inspire the public with evocative visuals that stand apart from the world of commerce surrounding them.

Eighteen works by SFAI faculty, students, and alumni were chosen from more than 300 submissions by Ben-Shitrit and a team of curatorial assistants, Danette Bouzanquet, Kaycee Phillips, and Vivian Vivas. The selections, each approx. 3 minutes in length for a total running time of 1 hour, include:

1. Zeina Barakeh, Homeland Insecurity & Slam Bang Blue Remix
2. Mads Lynnerup, Jewish Folktales Retold
3. Orit Ben-Shitrit, Ward of the Feral Horses
4. Avery D. van der Steur, Oscillation
5. Kathleen Quillian, The Conjurer
6. Kota Ezawa, Paint Unpaint
7. Scott Kiernan, Memphis Variations 3
8. Michael Mandiberg, All Haiku, All the Time
9. Sharon Lockhart, One Exercise in Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation
10. Kent Long, The Waves 11. Orit Ben-Shitrit, Universal Leader 2
12. Julia Fairbrother, Reclaiming Skylines
13. Walt Ohnesorge, Glass Rotation
14. Sequinette, Good Queen 15. Aziz + Cucher, You’re Welcome and I’m Sorry
16. David Bayus, Psyman’s Acres
17. Michelle Handelman, Gothic Snow, from Dorian, A Cinematic Perfume (wallpaper edition)
18. Minoosh Zomorodinia, Sensation

During the weeklong screening of Tunnels of the Mind, SFAI and ZAZ10TS will also feature Artistic Messages to Inspire from 7 to 9am and 7 to 9pm daily, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 75 artists from the SFAI community contributed additional work celebrating and reflecting on the resilience of New Yorkers during these difficult times. **

On Friday, June 12th, and Saturday June 13th 2020 at 9pm PDT, SFAI will project the entire program in San Francisco on the school’s landmark tower at 800 Chestnut Street, a venue that is visible to audiences throughout the city’s North Beach neighborhood. Synchronously, ZAZ Corner will feature a special midnight screening in New York, making this evening a live bicoastal act of East Coast-West Coast solidarity. The works will also be streamed on SFAI’s website at www.sfai.edu/tunnels-of-the-mind starting Wednesday, June 10 at 9pm.

Wander Woman 2 – Curated by Rea Lynn de Guzman 

Curated by  Rea Lynn de Guzman 

Opening Reception: Friday, May 8, 2020, 6-8pm
Exhibition Dates: May 8 – 23, 2020

Link to live presentation

SF Camerawork Gallery Project Room

Wander Woman 2, the second iteration of Wander Woman, provides an empowering and engaging platform for Bay Area-local, APA immigrant women of color, who vary in professional backgrounds from emerging to established. Its mission is to highlight the artists and their work, and to amplify their voices by presenting significant conversations surrounding issues of equity, gender roles, and underrepresentation. Further, it aims to foster deep connections within the community and beyond.

Exhibiting ArtistsKimberley Acebo Arteche, Kiana Honarmand, Kacy Jung, Joyce Nojima, Pallavi Sharma, Pamela Ybañez, and Minoosh Zomorodinia.

Wander Woman 2 is presented by SF Camerawork and the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center as part of the 23rd annual United States of Asian America Festival 2020: FINDING KINSHIP.

Photo credit Stacey Goodman, Shadow/Me performance still

Experiments in the Field: Creative Collaboration in the Age of Ecological Concern

Berkeley Art Center 

Experiments in the Field: Creative Collaboration in the Age of Ecological Concern presents artworks by Adriane Colburn, Alicia Escott, Stacey Goodman, Chanell Stone, Livien Yin, and Minoosh Zomorodinia, with a public participatory work by the Bureau of Linguistical Reality.

The ways we have come to know about our environment and the magnitude of the climate challenges we face has frequently been framed through visual modes such as satellite imagery, documentary photographs or simulation models. While scientific objectivity is crucial to our formal understanding of climate change, art offers a range of discursive, visual, and sensual strategies to connect with these complex issues. 

Art in its many forms has always documented human experience, imagined new futures, reoriented our perspectives, and sparked cultural change. The artists in this exhibition expand on the particularities of site, ownership, history, representation, perception, public domain, and stewardship. They explore deeply personal and cultural narratives through a transdisciplinary approach, working with performance, video, sculpture, writing, activism, scientific and historical data, and social engagement — a decisively human context that allows art to share meaning and transform values. While addressing ecological concerns, this exhibition is also a conceptual centrifuge for exploration and future action.

Artists: Bureau of Linguistical Reality, Adriane Colburn, Alicia Escott, Stacey Goodman, Keith Secola, Chanell Stone, Livien Yin, Minoosh Zomorodinia

Photo credit: Fern Schaffer Ritual

Performative Ecologies

Curated by Patricia Watts founder of ecoartspace 

June-September, 2020

CURRENTS 826 Gallery will feature the exhibition Performative Ecologies including eleven women artists who explore the role of ritual while engaging the natural world. Included are artifacts and documentations from performative works dating from 1971-2019, engagements of ecological consciousness in both urban and rural spaces.

The exhibition will be held at 826 Canyon Road with a virtual reception + tour on Sunday May 10, 2020 from 5-6pm. Closing date TBD, probably in August/September 2020.

Artists include: Fern Shaffer, Cherie Sampson, Shana Robbins, Mary Mattingly, Jenny Kendler, Minoosh Zomorodinia, Basia Irland, Alicia Escott, Claudia Bucher, Dominique Mazeaud and Bonnie Ora Sherk.

In 1987, Suzi Gablik published her radical book, The Reenchantment of Art. This was the author’s manifesto in which she proposed a more engaged, empathetic, participatory, and socially responsible approach to art. She also called for a revival of the mystical, which Gablik felt was often dismissed because of our rational modes of perceiving the world. Two artists she wrote about in her book, Dominique Mazeaud and Fern Shaffer are included in Performative Ecologies.

Performative art, unlike performance art, does not require an audience. The artists in Performative Ecologies take on the role of shaman or magical messenger to perform acts of cleansing or engaging the spirit world. These other worlds that the artists have envisioned offer a depth and meaning that has either been long forgotten or is being acknowledged in a new way. The remains of these performative works include photographs, video documentation, artifacts and “magic clothing” that the artists wore.

Curated by Patricia Watts, founder/curator of ecoartspace

 

Recology Artist in Residence 2020-2021

 

PEEPHOLE CINEMA NOW PLAYING HOFREH 

Dec 5, 2019- Jan 25, 2020 – San Francisco

January 27, 2020-June 9, 2020- New York

A collection of videos showcasing Iranian artists. The title Hofreh is a Persian word for hole or cavity and can also mean eye socket.

Curated by Minoosh Zomorodinia

The Peephole Cinema in San Francisco is proud to present “Hofreh” a collection of videos showcasing Iranian artists who live and work in the cities of Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz and Khoramabad. The title of this show is a Persian word that translates to hole or cavity and also applies to the word for eye socket. It’s a fitting title for works that respond to the Peephole Cinema’s unique space: videos that loop inside a hole in a wall located street side on a building in the Mission District. In this show the artists express challenges of identity and gender and sometimes use their bodies as a natural set up to express the power of fertility and love. Curated by Iranian-born interdisciplinary artist Minoosh Zomorodinia this show brings together a collection of artists that are part of her extended community. In these works there are references to loss and societal expectations. Loss of the natural environment caused by urban development in Iran’s cities and the human struggle as it relates to societal expectations on women. The later, causes many to leave the country so they can live freely rather than satisfy their family’s demand or societies pressures.

Holiday Pop-Up Sale

December 6-8, 2019 12-5pm

Artists’ Annual Exhibition 2019-2020

Kala Art institute December 5th 6-8:3pm 

 

Memory Walkshop led by Arthur Huang

hosted by The Walk Discourse 

In tandem with the exhibition, Root Division has partnered with The Walk Discourse who will be facilitating a walk throughout the SoMa neighborhood led by exhibiting artist Arthur Huang on Sunday, November 10 from 2:00 – 4:00pm.

Screening GOLDEN at Artists Television Access 

San Francisco, October 19th, 2019 5-6pm

What happens when poetry flies off the page, out a window, and into a pair of tap-dance shoes, and then dresses as a human-sized gold nugget? Come see a short film and two answers.

Living off the land, on the margins of Silicon Valley, “G-nug,” “the largest gold nugget on earth,” confronts a dry tap. A debilitating drought prompts her to journey to the steps of City Hall to recite an erasure poem: the Declaration of Independence missing the letters “T,” “R,” “U,” “M,” and “P”. “Golden” ends with her sleeping beside San Francisco’s historic golden Fire Hydrant, where hoodlums beat her up and leave her to die. The following day, G-nug’s dreams of water come true, when a blizzard hits the city, but in the form of fatal excess.

What begins as a mockumentary about a golden nugget, slowly reveals the representation of a homeless individual seeking basic resources. The embodiment of “the world’s largest gold nugget” is metaphorically rich; G-nug is made of gold but has few resources, forcing us to consider our worth, what we value, and at what cost.

Performacne at Shapeshifter Cinema

October 13, 2019 7-9pm

Minoosh Zomorodinia is an Iranian-born interdisciplinary artist who makes visible her emotional and psychological reflections as seen in her mind’s eye inspired by nature and her environments. Her work exposes and experiments with humanity’s relationship to the natural world. The piece she will be presenting, Illusion is an ongoing project addressing confusion in contemporary urban life. Using a variety of cameras (digital, 16mm and super-8mm), the artist documents her own wanderings through various landscapes in search of the lost spirituality in the modern world and the ambiguous and mystical origin of self.

Art Auction at Root Division

Oct 24th, 2019

Artful Harvest 

Djerassi Resident Artists program, Sunday Oct 18, 2019

AH2020 Goes Virtual

4Waves: 40 Performances for the Hole

September 11, 2019- 6-10pm

SOMArts and Justin Hoover/Collective Action Studio (CAS) are proud to co-present a new iteration of 100 Performance for the Hole: a marathon of artistic moments. In honor of the 40th anniversary of SOMArts Cultural Center, CAS is producing an abbreviated version titled 4Waves: 40 Performances for the Hole on Wednesday, September 11th, 5:58–10:00pm with Rhodessa Jones as a special program presenter and Justin Hoover as the evening’s emcee.

FEATURED ARTISTS: Alexandrea Echo Archuleta. Adrian Arias, Tierra Allen, Monet Clark, Maxe Crandall and Diana Cage, Mike Dingle, Shaghayegh Cyrous, Jordan Essoe, deCoy Gallerina, Guta Galli, Terrance Graven, Reshawn Goods / Bushmama, Africa, Keith Hennessy, Jesse Hewit / Juice Box, Dale Hoyt, Pete Ippel, Behnaz Khaleghi, Marcus Kuliand-Nazario, Landa Lakes, Peter Max Lawrence, Krisztina Lazar, Jennifer Locke, Margaret McCarthy, Liz Miller-Kovacs, Midori, Logan Moody & Chris Sauceda, Caro Novella, Ramekon O’Arwisters, Johanna Poethig, Randy Reyes, Kevin Seaman, Chris Sollars, Lauren Jade Szabo. Janet Silk, T_Shell, The Factronauts (Peter Foucault, Bryan and Vita Hewitt, Chris Treggiari), Shirin Towfiq, Chaz Walker, Rachel Znerold, Raheleh Minoosh Zomorodinia

 

Make Room for Me

Little Berlin, June 8, 2019 12-4pm

Make Room For Me is an exhibition showcasing the work of femme and queer-identifying artists with origins in the Middle and Near East. Consisting of all new media works, each artist manipulates space or the body, including its parts, routines, movements, and absence, as a form of expressing identity and heritage. Their manipulation of space and form in their practice serves as a radical act to carve out representation for a subject position commonly misunderstood and underrepresented. Make Room For Me is curated by Little Berlin member, Sarah Trad.

Artist Talk  The Painting Salon

at Wolfman Books 7-10pm

Dec. 4, 8-9:30 PM at ODC Dance Commons

Y-Exchange is a monthly series of presentations about performing arts, technology, science and how they intersect and inform one another. We invite selected artists and scientists to talk about their life and work with our community. This month Y-Exchange is proud to present Chris Shaw and Minoosh Zomorodinia. Y-Exchange is co-presented by Kinetech Arts, ODC Theatre and The Djerassi Resident Artists Program. This event is open to the public and admission is free.

VIRTUAL LAND – PERFORMANCE & ARTIST TALK 

 KALA Art Gallery in Berkeley Saturday April 27th 7-9pm 

Over the past 3 years Minoosh Zomorodinia has walked in different environments and documented her explorations on the land. While recording the routes of her walks on the land that doesn’t belong to her, she tries to own the land virtually using her cell phone app. Then she turns the paths to 3D objects as if they are imaginary homes, and uses the negative spaces from the routes to create her own territory.

Virtual Land questions what it means for an immigrant and for a citizen to connect with their environment. In her performance she invites audiences to walk in the space, play a game, and make their own territory.

The BodyWalk

San Francisco Arts Commission Main Gallery

February 23, 2019 from 2-4pm Walkshop #14

The Body Walk, developed by collaborating artists Minoosh Zomorodinia and Astrid Kaemmerling, invites participants to spend time to analyze the role of the moving body in space in San Francisco’s Civic Center neighborhood. Through playful activities, artists and participants will use their own bodies to navigate local places of inclusion and exclusion, and interact with places such as the Veteran’s Building, City Hall, the UN Plaza and the Public Library. This walk is aimed to help us grapple with the question where we belong and how our bodies can (pre)define belonging.

 

Part and Parcel, San Francisco Art Commisions

January 25th, 2018 6-8pm

The SFAC Galleries is pleased to present Part and Parcel, guest curated by renowned local artist, curator and educator Taraneh Hemami. As a member of the Iranian diaspora, Hemami was interested in fostering an exhibition that would take a look at geographies of belonging. What does it mean to belong? How do specific places affect our ability to be included or excluded from belonging? And how does one negotiate identity in a new space when dislocated from self-defining cultural, political, geographical, or social aspects from another? What role do desires to fit in and/or resist assimilation have in belonging?

The four featured artists, Tannaz FarsiGelare KhoshgozaranSahar Khoury, and Minoosh Zomorodinia examine crossings and becomings, systems and processes, nature and language, time and histories, and remnants of the everyday, in their multidisciplinary projects.

Art of the Iranian Diaspora 

Event Date: Friday, January 25 – 11:00 am to Saturday, March 30 – 6:00 am

One Night Performance WanderWoman 

Curated by Rea Lynn de Guzman

Root Division, FEBRUARY 9, 2019 7-10pm 

ONE NIGHT EVENT accompanying the exhibition, Wander Woman on view January 9 – February 9, 2019.

This one night only evening of performance compliments the visual art exhibition, Wander Woman. Performance offers a unique communication tool and physical manifestation of the immigrant womxn body experience. Ranging from participatory to literary to collaborative, performances will offer a multitude of perspectives on the experience of immigration to the Bay Area, specifically addressing issues of misrepresentation, stereotypes, cultural conflict, as well as feelings of both acceptance and intolerance.

In tandem with the exhibiting artwork, this evening of performance intends to transcend geographic boundaries by offering a variety of perspectives through diverse movement of how the body remains strong, resilient and individual despite outside forces and stigmas trying to strip the body down or push it to the margins.

 

Still from video Golden

ALCHEMY 

Curated by Anza Jarschke

Sierra Nevada CollegeJANUARY 2 – FEBRUARY 8, 2018

Archaic alchemy aimed to create value out of the valueless through a seemingly magical process of transformation and creation. Today our alchemical magicians are artists. They combine disparate objects, materials, and thoughts to create something that didn’t exist before. This group exhibition is a subversive cabinet of curiosities for these contemporary alchemists to share their synergy with us. All that glitters may very well be gold!

Artist Talk: 5:30 pm

 

Outsid In 

Curated by Sarah Klein at Peephole Cinema

San Francisco, January 8, 2019 – March 9, 2019

Work by Stacey Goodman, Gwyneth Zeleny Anderson and Minoosh Zomorodinia. Curated by Sarah Klein The Peephole Cinema is pleased to present Outside In a collection of three works of somatic experience of outer and inner landscapes. The show will screen 24/7 through a dime-sized peephole on Orange Alley in the Mission Districts. Presented in partnership with Intersection for the Arts as part of the Intersect SF series.

 

FORMS AND FIGURES 

ECHO PARK FILM CENTER, Los Angeles

FRIDAY, JAN 25 8pm

The performing body is intimate; it is exposed to harm, to the vulnerability of error, and the unmasking of things normally hidden. In performance, subjectivity, dislocated from objective knowledge, becomes a fully formed subject drawing correlations to sources outside the individual body. Stories emerge at the blending of interior and exterior, where the personal offers insight into constructed subjects and concepts. Through this, new avenues emerge to interpret the very relationship of subjectivity, subject, and subject hood. The presence of a lens further drives this multiplicity; part, half, or all of the body and its stage can be subtracted, while editing can alter the perception of action or proximity to the performer.

The following videos complicate the relationship between the performing subject and the subject performed, pushing and pulling both to stretch the possibilities of the personal and subjective as sources of intellectual knowing.

 

Synthetic Zero : Looking At What We Don’t Want To Look At 

Curated by Mitsu HadeishiBRONXARTSPACE, NY

Openings December 14 and 15, 6-10pm

Airplane Mode (performance meets tech duo Suzy Kohane and Mitsu Hadeishi) will be presenting (working title) “How to Wind a Watch”, followed by a performance by the stunning and incomparable Alexandra Tatarsky. The event will also include virtual reality, a living art installationexperimental videovideo installations, and visual art. The show is free to the public, but voluntary donations will be accepted for the performances.

ARTISTS

Michael Betancourt, Blanka Amezkua, Sofía Córdova, Cuntemporary Artists Presents, Robert Ladislas Derr, Kayla Farrish, Catherine Feliz, Bonella Holloway, Suzy Kohane, Marguerite Kalhor, Laura Hyunjhee Kim, Jeremy Moss, Nazrinka Musikova, Eugenia Pigassiou, Dayana Ruiz, Derek Taylor, Amy Tenenouser, Leila Weefur, Katie Williams, Minoosh Zomorodinia

 

Golden Routes-2019

California WalkscapesIncline Gallery

October 5th, 2018- 6-9pm

Artists: Liat Berdugo, Mary Campbell, Gina Chiao,Rebekah Dean,Leeza Doreian, Laura Elayne Miller, Olga Evanusa-Rowland, Emily Gui, Susanne Huth, Carey Lin & Gabriel Gilder, Erica Molesworth, Kelley O’Leary, Daniel Southard, Chris Thorson, Kevin Welch, Michal Wisniowski, Minoosh Zomorrodinia

When we walk our bodies get exposed to innumerous stimuli. Supported by our senses, we enter a field that requires us to constantly adapt to the changing environment and generate meaning that allows us to create knowledge needed to continue traversing streets, alleys, roads, and other passageways opening up in front of us. Whether in a city or rural landscape, through the act of walking, the physical, topographical and socio cultural layout of the environment we live in is understood experientially. Inspired by Francesco Careri’s publication Walkscapes this exhibit asks what information can we unearth about the California landscape through the act of  walking? California Walkscapes showcase artists from all genres who respond to walking from a number of different perspectives – for example, considering walking in the context of the body, urbanity, place and migration. Be ready for a mixed-media exhibition encompassing the genres of visual, performance, video, installation, and sound art. Stay connected for upcoming walkshops that will be integrated into the programming throughout the duration of the exhibition.

 

10th Anniversary Passport Exhibition 

San Francisco Arts Commission, October 21st, 2018

FINAL PASSPORT EVENT
When: Sunday, October 21, noon – 4:00 PM 
Where: Hayes Valley/Civic Center
Passport Home Base/Will Call: Patricia’s Green, Hayes & Octavia, Hayes Valley

10th ANNIVERSARY PARTY
When: Sunday, October 21, 4:30 PM – 6:30 PM
Where: SFAC Main Gallery, 401 Van Ness, Suite 126
Attend: Free and open to the public. No event participation required. 

What is Passport?
Now in its 10th year, this family-friendly art scavenger hunt puts the art collecting experience in the hands of the general public. Local artists will be stationed in venues throughout Hayes Valley/Civic Center and Passport attendees can “create” their own limited-edition artist’s book by collecting original, artist-designed stamps in a customized “passport” notebook. For this final iteration of Passport, SFAC Galleries will bring an estimated 300 do-it-yourself art collectors through a designated route to collect stamps from artists while also discovering the small businesses and venues that make the Hayes Valley/Civic Center neighborhood vibrant. Following the event, join SFAC Galleries for a 10th Anniversary after-party from 4 – 6 p.m. at the SFAC Main Gallery in the Veterans Building.

Sixteen emerging and established artists/collectives will participate this year including: Craig CalderwoodJeffrey CheungMichael HallChad HasegawaAngela HennessyJay KatelanskyKatie LonguaPhillip MaiselAlicia McCarthyGay OutlawGrace Rosario PerkinsLeah RosenbergRon Moultrie SaundersEli ThorneMinoosh Zomorodinia, and a special stamp from the estate of René Yañez

Artists will stamp passports at a variety of unique businesses and organizations in Hayes Valley/Civic Center, including: African American Art & Culture ComplexDark GardenDoob 3DGatherThe Green ArcadeHayes Valley Art WorksIsotopeKitTea CaféMACPlants and FriendsSF JazzVer Unica, and more! The SFAC Galleries worked closely with the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association to ensure that the entire community is engaged in the event.

 

The Walk Discourse at Flux Factory

 

Artful Harvest October 7, 2018

 

A SHIP IN THE WOODS MUSIC & ART FESTIVAL

Saturday June 16, 2018

 

Santa Fe Art Institue 

Tuesday, May 22 at 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM

SFAI Equal Justice Residents, Sara Madandar and Minoosh Zomorodinia, are US-based artists from Iran. They will perform a participatory piece on May 22nd at 6:30pm at SFAI. 

Sara Madandar will perform My Body Is My Home. This will be an hour and a half long presentation, Sara will perform for 15 minutes while also allowing space for the audience to engage in the overall presentation.

Memorial Lands is a participatory performance piece. Minoosh Zomorodinia as an immigrant looking for home by walking in different places. She takes maps of her walks around SFAI and creates a new place inside the gallery and marks the land by flags made of different materials. By using technology Minoosh Zomorodinia challenges notions of power and ownership— our ownership of technology and of the land itself. Audience are invited to join her and mark the land to create a territory by flags.

 

Imagining Sanctuary

Saturday March 31- April 21, 2018

Solo show by IC3 Artist-in-Residence Minoosh Zomorrodinia

 Minoosh Zomorrodinia’s solo exhibition at ICCNC takes up the theme of sanctuary. This show —featuring video installations, sculpture and performances—demands that viewers ask themselves questions about who or what deserves sanctuary in our troubled times: endangered flora and fauna, refugees, the unhoused, women survivors, indigenous people? Where can any of them find real sanctuary, in the Bay Area or anywhere else in our present time and place? The exhibition challenges one’s own powers of observation.

Minoosh Zomorodinia is an observant Muslim artist of Iranian descent, and her exhibition at the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California takes up the theme of sanctuary. This show —featuring video installations, sculpture and performances—demands that viewers ask themselves questions about who or what deserves sanctuary in our troubled times: endangered flora and fauna, refugees, the unhoused, women survivors, indigenous people? Where can any of them find real sanctuary, in the Bay Area or anywhere else in our present time and place? The exhibition challenges one’s own powers of observation.

Curatorial direction/writing by Thea Quiray Tagle, PhD

 

Desire Trails

Headlands Center for the Arts

The CloudWalk with Minoosh Zomorodinia and Astrid Kaemmerling

The CloudWalk is a performative walk through the landscape of the Marin Headlands. Together with the artists, participants are invited to think about our changing relationship to clouds as we transition between landscapes and technoscapes. Historically, clouds have provided water and were a symbol of air, and more recently clouds have come to symbolize data transfer and global knowledge streams. Chase clouds together and elaborate on their role in the natural landscape and our daily lives. Be prepared to become clouds yourselves and to transition between discussions about the natural environment and the landscape of data flows while connecting together in meaningful new ways.

Colonial Walk

Curated by Thea Quiray Tagle

January 27th, 2018- March 10th, 2018

Feast Arts Center (Tacoma, WA) and independent curator Thea Quiray Tagle present Minoosh Zomorodinia: Colonial Walk, an interdisciplinary art project that runs from January 27-March 10, 2018. The project is comprised of a gallery exhibition of Zomorodinia’s multimedia installation “Colonial Walk,” in addition to prints and sculptures from the larger series.

Follow my Shadow, 2015

Earth Body 

Curated by Sidney Bacon Russell

October 27, 2017

OOBLECK PRESENTS: EARTH-BODY

a group exhibition featuring: Nancy Beckman, Rachael Cleveland, Mercedes Dorame, Emma Lanier, Cheryl Leonard, Ashley May, Sophia Shen, Jacqueline Sherlock Norheim, Hannah Perrine Mode, and Minoosh Zomorodinia

October 27 – November 10, 2017
Opening + Performances: Oct. 27 (7 – 10 pm) Closing Performances + Party: Nov.3 (8 – 11 pm) (with an after party featuring Robby Kharr)

 

Colonial Walk (21h:9′:3″), 2017

Colonial Walk (21h:9′:3″) at Avenue 12 Gallery

About Colonial Walk:

As an immigrant investigating the self in the natural environment, Zomorodinia borrows ritual to picture her dreams. Using walking as medium, and recording her path with an app, she creates a pilgrimage that belongs exclusively to her. Individual videos taken along the route are structured together into moving images within each frame by the use of sophisticated software. The final artwork contains movement within movement, mapping land that does not belong to her, thereby addressing the notion of power and ownership in relation to technology.

 

Shelter, 2017
Shelter, 2017

Homecoming Exhibition at ACRE

 Curated by Sabrina Greig

Homecoming
Works by Bahareh Khoshooee, Ke Peng, and Minoosh Zomorodinia
Curated by Sabrina Greig
October 6th-27th

Homecoming is a three-person exhibition presenting work by Bahareh Khoshooee, Ke Peng, and Minoosh Zomorodinia at ACRE Project Galleries from October 6th- October 27th. Working across the mediums of photography, video, and installation, the exhibiting artists expand the scope of transnational narratives to challenge notions of citizenship and sensations of belonging. Through the manipulation of digital interfaces, they collectively provide an innovative commentary on the socio-political uncertainties Diasporic communities face.

Originating from the international locations of Iran and China, the artists on view in Homecoming redefine place-making from multiple perspectives. Minoosh Zomorodinia exhibits Shelter, a multimedia installation that uses kaleidoscopic projections to investigate the humanitarian issue of homelessness and society’s relationship to the natural world. Bahareh Khoshooee’s video entitled <<–space spice ,.;’]’ foreign sneeze )’///:;’.,; Sunday snooze =’;,.>> is an ironic exploration of the challenging process of obtaining a U.S Visa. The piece touches upon the fragility of American citizenship and how the nuances of immigration politics can complicate one’s daily experience. Your Flower Might not Blossom by Ke Peng is a meditation on maturation and becoming an adult away from loved ones. The narrative follows the artist’s grandmother who believes in the auspicious significance of lotus flowers.

Each exhibited piece, bordering on the uncanny and the otherworldly, gives agency to Bahareh Khoshooee, Ke Peng, and Minoosh Zomorodinia as they question the value and intricacies of locating home. Their transnational critiques dynamically visualize their internal and external worlds through digital means, making their immigrant experiences tangible and accessible to the viewer.

                        Opia 2017 photo credit Minoosh Zomorodinia

Transform Fest 2017 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Sept 16&21, 2017 8pm

Larry Arrington is a dance artist, Sandra Lawson Ndu is a musician based in Oakland, and Minoosh Zomorodinia is an Iranian-born artist working in photography, video, performance, and installation.

These collaborators will turn to magic, imagination, and story, digging into the soil to unearth gestating potential. What stories do we belong to? What magic are we using to create contexts that produce these questions of citizenship? Stories create fear, but they also create magic.

 

21h:9′:3″ at Commons Opening September 17th, 2017

Commons

Opening at the Headlands Center for the Arts

Sept 17th, 2017

Knots& Ripples, Introductions 

Root Division, Sept 9, 2017 8pm

Open Studio at I-Park Artist Residency

July  23, 2017

Join us for an afternoon of art, music, nature and conversation.

You will get to meet the 5 artists who are in residence with us this July.

The artists will be in their studios from 2:00 until 3:30pm and will be happy to share glimpses into their creative process – as well as some of the works they’ve developed during their time at I-Park. Select presentations and a short site walk will begin at 3:30pm followed by refreshments (Ice Cream Social!).

We look forward to seeing you!

 

Everyone is Hypnotized

ProArts, May 5-26, 2017

Everyone is Hypnotized: Artists Dérive the Bay Area, is a group exhibition of works by 11 Bay Area artists that draw from the experience of wandering about the Bay Area’s rich and varied landscapes. This exhibition was curated by the Oakland-based team Gipe + Tell as part of Pro Arts’ Curators in Residence program. Exhibiting artists include Sebastian Alvarez, Brian Dean, Joanne Easton, Marshall Elliott, Jon Gourley, Jon Kuzmich, Leora Lutz, Andréanne Michon, Maria Porges, Michal Wisniowski and Minoosh Zomorodinia.

The exhibition is inspired by Guy Debord’s “Theory of the Dérive,” a dérive being an unplanned journey in which participants ‘let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.’ Curators, Gipe + Tell began with the question, “What steps can artists take to engage in intellectual investigation, creative growth, and critical interrogation while navigating the urban environment?” They asked the artists to engage in dérive as a template for exploration, with the artwork being a visual manifestation of their experience. The resulting artwork highlights the possibility for engagement, detachment or both.

Stairwell’s Mini-Field Trips

Saturday, May 20, 2017, 11am – 4pm

Common Grounds Arts Festival Family Day

San Francisco Chronicle Parking Lot (5th & Natoma), SOMA

Join Stairwell’s at the Common Grounds Arts Festival Family Day, hosted by Intersection for the Arts, for hands-on activities and two newly-crafted mini-Field Trips! Each of these FREE one-hour walking tours will be led by Stairwell’s Co-Director Carey Lin in collaboration with guest Field Trip leaders Raheleh Minoosh Zomorodinia and Gabriel Gilder.

Explore the SOMA neighborhood, write (and decode) secret messages, play interactive games and much more! Field Trips depart at 12:30 pm and 2:30 pm but we expect the spots to fill up fast, so stop by the festival early to sign-up if you’d like to come along. Curious about what happens on a Stairwell’s Field Trip? Check out photos of some of our past walks.

Nietzsche Was a Man MALMÖ KONSTHALL 2014

NIETZSCHE WAS A MAN

Video works by 19 Iranian women
April 10 – June 15, 2014

C-hall

Nietzsche Was A Man shows films by 19 Iranian women artists, who examine universal issues of gender, prejudice, identity, violence and the relationship between man and his environment. Curators are Alysse Stepanian (USA) and Neda Darzi (Iran).

The German 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s seemingly misogynistic views have been questioned and debated many times. A later interpretation of his aphorisms suggests that his statements were an ironic tactic intended to expose the hierarchical dualisms of Western thought and language, and our gender stereotypes.

The exhibition title Nietzsche Was A Man * refers to the underlying dualistic patriarchal worldview that subordinates and exploits nature and that which lacks power, which separates men from women and people from animals.

Featuring Artists: Fereshteh Alamshah (Iran), Morehshin Allahyari (USA), Maneli Aygani (USA / Iran), Neda Darzi (Iran), Mozhgan Erfani (France), Samira Eskandarfar (Iran), Celia Eslamieh Shomal (Netherlands), Roxy Farhat (Sweden), Tara Goudarzi (Iran), Samira Hashemi (Iran / USA), Haleh Jamali (UK), Gelare Khoshgozaran (USA), Shahrzad Malekian (Iran), Azadeh Nilchiani (France), Raha Rastifard (Iran / Germany), Farideh Shahsavarani (Iran / USA), Alysse Stepanian (USA), Parya Vatankhah (France), Raheleh (Minoosh) Zomorodinia (USA)