Hejazi Sisters

Opening on 24th February 2023
On View until 17th March 2023

Artists:
Farhad Ahrarnia, Shaqayeq Ahmadian, Sara Assareh, Samira Eskandarfar, Mohamad Eskandari, Ebrahim Eskandari, Reihaneh Afzalian, Sanahin Babajanians, Fatemeh Bahman Siyahmard, Dadbeh Bassir,Parisa Taghipour, Sara Tavana, Manijeh Hejazi, Parisa Hejazi, Sara Hosseini, Zari Hosseini, Hamid Hemayatian, Anahita Darabbeigi, Nasim Davari, Raoof Dashti, Navid Salajegheh, Sara Soleimani Qashqayi,Amir Hossein Shahnazi, Hamed Sahihi, Nastaran Safaei, Bahar Samadi, Kiarang Alaei, Maryam Farzadian, Mayram Farshad, Mehdi Farhadian, Naghmeh Ghassemlou, Amirali Ghasemi, Narges Mohamadian, Shirin Mellatgohar,Koosha Moossavi, Parsoua Mahtash, Elmira Mirmiran, Allahyar Najafi, Siamak Nasr, Nazgol Nayeri, Leila Nouraei, Mohammad Hamzeh, Marjan Hoshiar.

Don’t be sad, my land!
I have planted flower seeds in your wounds
One day there will be flower everywhere…
Alireza Roushan

For Women, For Life, For Freedom

It is through artistic creations that Iran reveals her true self and this many believe constitutes her most precious legacy. The Persian legacy has endured many turbulences of history. No historical shock has been able to break the chain. There were interruptions, yet they always permitted even provoked a resumption of creativity; ideas, styles, techniques forcefully imposed, were accepted and integrated in to our existing practice. The Iranian spirit is a tenacious one, we can endure extremes and at the same time our thousands of years of history teaches us to remain optimistic and persistent.
Throughout the last forty-four years of our perpetual revolution, the visual artists have had to carve their independence; in the first years the universities were purged through the so-called Cultural Revolution and artists and professors had to look for other jobs or start private classes. Many left the country. Although it was a difficult struggle, but they succeeded in achieving autonomy from a Regime that controls the distribution of our national wealth and would never support progressive arts. This resilient attitude which is now adapted by the younger generations, was very important in the recent difficult times where despite pressures and the fears, the visual arts has stood its ground and has been an outspoken and integral part of the structure of our brave civil society.
Our artists continue to consciously challenge the status quo and the peripheral environment as well as themselves. They insist on their sense of independence and persist in their capabilities like all other modern human beings. They help preserve a Persian legacy, enriching our lives and inspiring us as a nation to become better than we are. It is this perseverance and humility that is the source of the merit of Iranian arts and its limitless potential.
We are constantly reminded of our legendry bird: The Phoenix who is believed to possess the knowledge of all times, from ashes she rises to create wonderment, she plunges in to flames to be purified , to rise again, every time stronger, every time mightier.
Nazila Noebashari

Opening on 4th March 2022
On view until 1st April 2022

Manijeh Armin- Tajsar Jafari- Marjan Hoshiar- Koosha Moossavi- Arezoo Shahdadi- Shahrzad Araghinejad- Mehdi Farhadian- Allahyar Najafi- Parsoua Mahtash- Mohammad Eskandari- Nastaran Safaei- Parisa Taghipour- Mahya Giv- Maryam Farshad- Sara Tavana- Rene Saheb- Manijeh And Parisa Hejazi- Salé Sharifi

A Flower Blossoms for its Own Joy.
Oscar wilde

We celebrate the arrival of the Iranian New Year and a New Century by showcasing works of artists whose practice is mostly influenced by nature. On this occasion, it is fitting to quote an Ode to A Garden Carpet – By an unknown Sufi Poet (Circa 1500):
Here in this carpet lives an ever-lovely spring, un-scorched by summer’s ardent flame, safe too from autumn’s boisterous gales, Mid winter’s cruel ice and snow, ‘Tis gaily blooming still. Eyes hot-seared by desert glare find healing in its velvet shade. Splashing foundations and rippling pools in cool retreats, sore-wearied limbs restore, and tired hearts awaken with joy. The way was cruel.
Baffled by monotony and mocked by phantoms, delirious, beset by stalking death in guises manifold; The dreaded jinns, the beasts ferocious, the flaming heat and the exploding storms; from all these perils here at last set free; in the Garden all find security.
Here the long-laboring Earth, at last, gives birth. From apparent death, a new and lovely world is born; the jacinth imprisoned lies below the desert’s dusty floor. The stony wilderness is so bleak and bare, in ageless patience broods, aware of life within, the promise of fertility and abundance. Ever longing for deliverance. The world, at last, reveals its destiny.
Can we not then capture and restore The loveliness that gave us hope, still brightly mirrored on memory’s gliding waters or snared in the poets’ invisible net, so wide, so fragile, yet captor and conqueror of realities elusive?
Wrought in gold and azure, bright as carved metal. Dream-like foliage in sparking tones is caught, or else, in sumptuous shades of glossy lacquer, quiet but intense; in muffled browns and honey pure, Jasper cool and mellow cinnabar, that fairyland comes real again.
In sudden collisions, find sweet embrace; in rhythms enchanting, with stately pace, rollicking speed; emerging, retreating, reversing, in peaceful finality. Their conflicts reconcile, all in confederation blending like a chorus in part-song gladly singing, In contrapuntal play rejoicing, floating soft or wildly free, yet anchored in eternity.

Opening on 11th June 2021
On view until 25th June 2021

This shared experience disrupted the repetitive sequence of historical events, and ancient and contemporary times are intertwined. In this collection of works, the relationship between tangible and real elements is portrayed in such a way that the created illusory situation point to symbolic meanings. Mysterious forces encompass people, animals, plants, and objects. The strangest events seem normal and natural in this eerie world and the heart of horror stories. Fear of emptiness and futility of material life causes a change that eventually expands the scope of visual memory and imagination. Showing a nightmarish and threatening atmosphere raises doubts about reality, and by portraying the impossible, a confusing truth is revealed.
In this world, nothing is natural and definite. Anything that seems genuine can be an anomaly and quickly lose its identity. In these works, the earthly human world that seeks immortality is confronted with a mythical world that is tired of timelessness and seeks death. A dream of timeless events in an unknown land, where a complex reality is simplified and offers an improbable and variable aspect to social conditions. The characters are products of the artists’ view of this time and this place, of their imagination, and also sometimes borrowed from old images and narratives; all intended to praise life and express humanity’s pain, and finally to realize imagery that allows for fantasy to overcome reality.
Parisa and Manijeh Hejazi

Opened on 5th July 2019
Continued to 22nd July 2019

Group exhibition displaying sculptures by:
Azam Hosseinabadi- Mahbobeh Hosseini Mousa- Mahdieh Pazouki- Farnaz Rabieijah -Nastaran Safaie-Parisa Taghipour
and special guest Farzaneh Mehri

Roots Buried in the Dark Earth
They soaked up the energy of the sun and
The essence of the moon
Moistened by the rain and dew, they understood…

This exhibition aims to combine the works of seven female sculptors with their distinct language and approach. The diversity in this group of works is an indicator of the spirit of perseverance and dedication by which these artists have so far molded their individual paths.
The exhibition’s title is an excerpt from the novel Red Sorghum by Mo Yan. On page two, he characterizes the place of the narrative, Northeast Gaomi Township, as ‘easily the most beautiful and most repulsive, most unusual and most common, most sacred and most corrupt, most heroic and most bastardly, hardest-drinking and hardest-loving place in the world.
The vibrant artworks gathered in this exhibition are a product of this time and this place, where we are the happiest and the most miserable; a product of land in a constant state of flux, a realm where extraordinary circumstances always persist. It is, therefore, the ambition of this exhibition to show that against such a backdrop, purity of thought and approach is still possible and deserves appreciation and exposure.

Opening at Aaran Projects on June 14th, 2019
On view until July 1st, 2019

A standalone painting is a micro narrative and relays what the society seeks today; a way to explain ourselves and find relationship to the rest of the society. In micro narratives there is diversity of believes, aspirations and desires. As world continues to lose faith in metanarratives the micro narratives push forward, particularly with advance of internet and connectivity and the amazing use of social media by a great number of populace who are determined to leave their mark on the world.

Manijeh Hejazi’s choice of painting from her family photographs is a repetitive compulsion, a re-living of certain moments in life. By re shaping actual images recorded by a camera, this young artist creates a passage through the barrier of time, the past is now. The medium of painting is used to create new imagery and make the memories more tangible. A conscious choice for blending the past and the present, building a bridge between the force and actuality of the past with the perception that there is a freedom of choice in present time.

Painting on found pieces of wood and using old window bars and by leaving certain surfaces of wood untouched, artist designs a spacing that allows the viewer to reach a transient point between the past and the present. The background of wood as a once living thing that has traveled through the span of time, becomes a terrain for the flow of the imagery that stares back from past.
In these recreated instances we find small realities of life, between what it is and what might have been, between reality and perception of it. Narratives that are neither grand nor insignificant, and well worth visiting.