Session 6: Wonder Women Unveiled
Aphrodite Désirée Navab
Social Practice + Narrative
Aphrodite Navab, From the series, I AM NOT A PERSIAN CARPET, 2001, Gelatin Silver Print, Permanent collection of the Harn Museum of Art.
Monday, March 29, 2021, 9 am EST
Webinar Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84592197420
Webinar ID: 845 9219 7420
Portrait of the Artist, Aphrodite Navab, 2021
In this talk, Iranian Greek American artist, Aphrodite Désirée Navab will share her art research and practice by investigating ways of re-presenting and critiquing self and culture through camera-based art, using a comparative analysis of the work of Shirin Neshat and her own. Navab demonstrates how an Orientalist tool (the camera) has been transformed into a means for self-representation and cultural critique. The Iranian Islamic revolution (1978-79) overthrew 2,500 years of monarchy; Iranian feminists, however, were challenging 5,000 years of patriarchy. In her published doctoral dissertation at Columbia University, Navab argues that these artists use the camera to reclaim their life narratives in autobiographical productions, challenging both the Orientalist hegemony and the Iranian censorship of the telling of their own life stories through their own bodies—where Wonder Women are unveiled.
Suggested Reading:
Navab, Aphrodite Désirée (2011). De-Orientalizing Iran: The Art of Sevruguin, Neshat, Navab and Ghazel. A Comparative Analysis of the Autobiographical Art of Four Diasporic Iranians. Berlin: Lambert Academic Publishing, pp 104-192.
Born in Iran and based in New York, the artist Aphrodite Désirée Navab mines her Iranian, Greek and American heritage, calling forth its competing histories, myths, and politics and tracing its impact on her personal identity.
In 2004 she completed an Ed.D doctorate in Art Education at Columbia University. She received her BA magna cum laude in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard College in 1993.
Navab’s art has been featured in over one hundred and fifty exhibitions and is included in a number of permanent collections including: The Addison Gallery of American Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Lowe Art Museum, the Harn Museum of Fine Arts, Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Naples, Italy, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Arkansas State University.
At present, Navab has a solo museum show, Landmines of Memory, at the Addison Gallery of American Art (Jan-April 2021). She had a solo exhibition, The Homeling, at Johannes Vogt gallery in New York (Jan.-Feb. 2018). Her was exhibited at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in the traveling group museum show: Men of Steel, Women of Wonder, (Feb 9-April 22, 2019). In 2009, her art was featured in the museum exhibition and catalogue, Through the Lens: Photography from the Permanent Collection, at the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami. The exhibition featured only 100 significant photographs from more than 1,000 photographic holdings from: Julia Margaret Cameron and Walker Evans to Cindy Sherman and Gregory Crewdson.
In 2018, Navab was invited to be an artist member of the prestigious A.I.R. Gallery (Artists-in-Residence) which is the oldest women’s art collective in the USA. She serves on the Executive Board.