Appearance Stripped Bare
Negin Sharifzadeh

Curated by Giulio Verago

GALLERY I

September 6 – October 6, 2019
Opening Reception: Friday, September 6, 6-8pm

Panel Discussion: Saturday, September 14, from 3-4:30pm with Giulio Verago, Alix Brouillion, and Bryn Gast.

A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce Appearance Stripped Bare, an exhibition by A.I.R. New York Artist Member Negin Sharifzadeh. This body of work uses photography, sculpture, and animation to interrogate the concept of the European Renaissance as an isolated phenomenon, rather than a period in organic conversation with movements that had started earlier in the Middle East. 

Sharifzadeh explores the impact of the broader Mediterranean culture and ideas that helped spark and inform Europe’s rebirth, juxtaposed against the present-day collisions of culture, by placing her own body as a contemporary woman from the Middle East within the imagery, iconography, and physical geography of the Italian Renaissance. Too often, art historians have placed European arts in a position of privilege, exorcising and minimizing arts from other regions. Through this re-contextualization and reclamation, she aims to challenge the very idea of European and Middle Eastern otherness.

Negin Sharifzadeh is a cross-disciplinary artist and storyteller based in Brooklyn, NY. Sharifzadeh has had solo exhibitions and performances in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Florence, Melbourne, and Tehran, and has been part of multiple international group exhibitions and festivals. Her animated films have won numerous awards, including Best Experimental Film at the 2012 Williamsburg International Film Festival, Best Animation at the 2012 Crown Heights International Film Festival, and Best Short Film at the 2013 New York 3rd-I Film Awards. Her films have also been shown at many festivals internationally, including the Melbourne International Film Festival, Australia; Firenze Suona Contemporanea, Italy; San Paulo Biennale, Brazil; and Frankston Art Centre and Noir Darkroom Gallery in Melbourne, Australia. Both her artwork and her curatorial work have been reviewed in The Huffington Post, The New York Times, Art Report, Herald Sun, Global Voices, Artibune, Art World Women, Art View, Voice of America, and BBC Persian Services. Sharifzadeh received her BFA in Sculpture from Tehran University in Iran in 2002, and her BFA in Performing Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010.

Read the full press release here.
View Sharifzadeh's page here.