Hilger Brot Kunsthalle presents The Promise of Loss.

The Promise of Loss.
A Contemporary Index of Iran
Curated by Shaheen Merali
10 October – 30 November 2009

Opening 9 October 5-10 p.m.

Brot Kunsthalle
1100 Vienna, Austria
Absberggasse 35
T: +43-1-512 53 15
F: +43-1-512 53 32
E:brot@brotkunsthalle.com
http://www.brotkunsthalle.com

The Promise of Loss.
A Contemporary Index of Iran.
Curator: Shaheen Merali

Living as we all do in an imperfect world, where the remainders of the past fall away or return to haunt our creative contemporaries, the exhibition is a consolidation of many dashed hopes, a desire to build a shrine as well as to plant trees in the campus condemned to destruction. The artists enable both a reading of the situation and encouragement to cross the distance where the bitterness of loss reigns within the national moral.

The exhibition The Promise of Loss is organized to mine the huge ground of Iran. The connection of expertise to experience, the rhythm of its measures and the constancy of the artistic gaze into its shadows have made listening to the artists’ interpretations more urgent.

Mandana Moghaddam’s installation Sara’s Paradise (2009) is an ode to the time-honored place in the cemetery of Behesht e Zahra, Tehran, where the fate of the martyrs from the Iraq-Iran war that claimed over 800,000 young lives are commemorated. The place, as seen in the installation, is a gory fountain of red water continuously bleeding into the world. The source of the blood is the martyrs and their families who encouraged holy participation to the bitter end, lured by a promise of a place in paradise.

The exhibition will be curated in five sections:
a) Beyond Iran and near Tehran: Peyman Hooshmandzadeh and Mandana Moghaddam.
b) Graphic, unfolding tributaries: Parastou Forouhar, Sara Rahbar and Neda Razavipour.
c) Responses to legacies: Samira Abbassy, Babak Golkar, Amin Nourani, Behrang Samadzadegan and Jinoos Taghizadeh.
d) The main-melancholia: Iman Afsarian, Shahram Entekhabi, Abbas Kowsari and Rozita Sharafjahan.
e) Re-imaging the revolution: Masoumeh Bakhtiyari, Asgar/Gabriel, Shadi Ghadirian and Leila Pazooki.
(Text by Shaheen Merali).

For further information please contact the gallery: ernst.hilger@hilger.at