Life Unraveled
Parisa Shabani

GALLERY III

September 7 – October 6, 2024

Opening reception: Saturday, September 7, from 6–8pm

A.I.R Gallery is pleased to announce Life Unraveled, an exhibition by artist Parisa Shabani. Shabani will be showing a new body of work, including installations and paintings, that uses threads from unfurled clothing to explore the affective conditions of exile and displacement. This is Shabani’s second solo exhibition in New York City.

Life Unraveled gives spatial form to the anxiety that afflicts exiles and immigrants—particularly those who are women or minorities—after they are displaced from their countries of origin. The title of the exhibition describes the condition of displacement: scattered roots are symbolized by threads originating from woven clothes. Unfurled threads which were once clothing are transformed into abstract sculptures and wall hangings, a process that serves as a metaphor for a refugee’s bygone past and the shattered life she must now face.

Composed of individual threads that are woven together to create a cohesive whole, fabric represents attachment and community. The patterns that decorate fabrics, meanwhile, are often rich with symbolism and meaning—certain colors or forms become markers of individual identity. If the original clothes and patterns were an erstwhile integral reality, their remaining threads are the unraveled present. And yet, these deconstructed elements—layers of paint, strands of bold color, shapes of fabric—also come together to create new forms, transforming into a record of the artist’s will to remake and reconstruct.

Parisa Shabani has always been fascinated by the human person and her story. Rooted in her past diverse and tumultuous life, her work discovers faint traces of the lived experience of perpetual overcoming as analytic elements to be represented in interactive synthesis with current socio-political realities, in an abstract form.Shabani has shown in New York City and internationally. She has had several solo shows in New York City, Tehran and Seoul. She participated in different art biennales and International art fairs including in London, UK, Florence, Italy, and Tokyo, Japan. Her work has been exhibited in various group shows worldwide and has appeared in several publications, including as book covers for books published in Baku, Azerbaijan and Istanbul, Turkiye. She is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist originally from Tehran. She earned her MA in Linguistics and has studied painting and sculpture at The Art Students League of New York,where she now is a lifetime member.www.parisashabani.com

View the Press Release here.

Photography: Matthew Sherman