Amirali Ghasemi Coffee Shop Ladies No. 7 2004/5
May 4 – June 16, 2012
Opening: Friday, May 4, 6 – 9 p.m.
Artist Talk: Saturday, May 5, 3 – 4 p.m.
GALLERY 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 120
Toronto, ON M5V 3A8
T: 416.979.3941
E: robyn@gallery44.org
www.gallery44.org
Hours: Tue-Sat 11 – 5 p.m.
For this exhibition, curator Andrea Fitzpatrick has selected the works of Iranian artists Samira Eskandarfar, Amirali Ghasemi, Abbas Kowsari, Zeinab Salarvand, Arman Stepanian, and Sadegh Tirafkan, all of whom live and work in Tehran. Their images express the wit, elegance and sensitivity of the culture, and the individuality of the artists. Gallery 44 hopes that this exhibition will be a process of discovery for the viewer, and an exploration of artmaking as an increasingly important tool in international dialogues.
Artist Biography
Samira Eskandarfar was born in Iran in 1980 and lives and works in Tehran. She studied ceramic engineering before going on to study filmmaking and finally took an MA in animation. Since 2003, she has made over ten videos from which two of her works were purchased by major public collections, including the Tate Modern in London and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (NBK) in Berlin. Amirali Ghasemi was born in Tehran in 1980. He lives and works in Tehran. Ghasemi is a graphic artist, media artist, and one of the city’s most active curators of emerging artists. He has travelled all over the world to present his own work and to speak about the young generation of Iranian artists. He is the organizer of the Parking Gallery in Tehran, which provides an independent space for community dialogue about contemporary art. Abbas Kowsari was born in Tehran in 1970. He lives and works in Tehran. Kowsari has been a photojournalist and a photo editor at Iranian newspapers since the early 1990s. He has exhibited his work in prestigious group exhibitions in Paris, Vienna, London, Los Angeles, New York, and Torino. Zeinab Salarvand was born in Tehran in 1984. She lives and works in Tehran. Salarvand holds a BA in photography from the Art University of Tehran. In 2008, she won the top prize at the First International Photography Biennial of the Islamic World in Tehran. She has been included in group exhibitions at galleries in Tehran, as well as at the British Museum, London. Arman Stepanian, born in 1956 in Abadan, Iran, lives and works in Tehran. This Armenian-Iranian artist holds a BA in graphic design from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Tehran University. He has been included in many important Iranian biennial exhibitions since 1990, as well as international group exhibitions of Iranian photographic art held in New York, Paris, London, and other cities. Sadegh Tirafkan was born in Iraq in 1965 to Iranian parents, and has lived in Tehran since 1970. Tirafkan graduated from the University of Tehran with a BA in 1990, and since that time has been working in photography, video, and sculpture with solo exhibitions internationally. His work is in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the British Museum; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris; and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran.