Zahra Orna Kazemi Selected Artworks

Transcription

1 THECA GALLERY CONTEMPORARY ART Zahra Orna Kazemi Selected Artworks MILANO ITALY Via Tadino, 22 Milano

2 ZAHARA ORNA KAZEMI ask to the gallery for other works of this serie Untitled Gouache on wassli paper, 30 40cm, 2013

3 Zahra Orna Kazemi Painting Zahra Orna Kazemi was born in Mashhad, in Iran, in The artist belongs to a Turkish-Mongolian ethnic minority, the Hazara, and she grows up in Iran where she starts her first artistic study before moving to Afghanistan. Zahra Orna Kazemi s work is mentioned among the most interesting artistic production made by the emerging generation of Iranian artists. In 2009 she enrols to the Natural Resources Engineering course at Ferdowsi University in Mashhad (Iran). However, she keeps devoting herself to studying art, precisely painting. For two years in a row, 2011 and 2012, the artist is selected as the best emerging artist at Mashhad Youth Visual Arts in Iran, the visual arts prize for young artists. The following year, 2013, Zahra Orna Kazemi is chosen as the best artist during the fourth edition of the Kabul Contemporary Art Prize. After learning the basic painting techniques at the Hussain Waahid Academic Art Studio, the artist focuses on her personal expressive way through several new artistic techniques. In the series Untitled, gouache on wassli paper, she reproduces Koranic verses that intersect with vertical transparencies well integrated with the dark watercolours tones. The sense of verticality prevails in the whole series and it could be identified from the combination of irregular spots of colour in contrast with the inferior dark part. In Untitled the hot, wide and dense tones contrast with the vertical elements that constitute and sometimes stiffen the whole composition. The colours mingle in an harmonic combination of undefined shapes from which lengthened human figures emerge as dusty reflections. Consequently, the ethereal delicate surface from where the verticals move appears warm and blurry. Meanwhile, the whole composition seems to vanish, in so losing its original consistency. Zahara Orna Kazemi s series appears an uncertain scene, as much uncertain as the life of her cohabitants in the places where the artist works and lives. Looking at the artistic production of Zahara Orna Kazemi it is important to focus on the historical and geographical context she belongs to. This is a region where the endless conflict has been on from almost thirty years, in so creating an entire generation of adults for whom war is the primary lived experience of their life. Zahara Orna Kazemi among them. Bearing this first considerations in mind, it is right the primitive barren colours of the earth to best emerge in her whole artwork. In so doing, her artistic work becomes an authentic proof of the way the cruel reality of the never-ending Afghan conflict is an integral part of the cultural artistic tradition of the inhabitants of the region. In 2013, Zahra Orna Kazemi takes part to the Beirut Contemporary Art Fair in Lebanon, to which it follows her participation to the collective show in Milan (Italy), Ten to Twelve canvas project. Zahara Orna Kazemi belongs to the Taasha Artists (meaning, hidden artists ), an Afghan artistic group founded by the young artist Mohsen Taasha Wahidi. Zahara Orna Kazemi is the one and only woman of the group, and she participates to the first collective show organised by Taasha Artist in 2013, in Alghuchack, in Afghanistan. Still in the same year, Zahra Orna Kazemi starts off at the French Cultural Center of Afghanistan (FCC) in Kabul with her first solo show titled Naissance. The following year, 2014, she participates to the show Art Amongst War: Visual Culture in Afghanistan , curated by Deborah Sutton and organised at the New Jersey Sarnoff Museum, in USA. The American retrospective is an interdisciplinary exposition aimed at analysing the changes in Afghanistan between 1979 and It means to focus on the way the visual culture has been influenced between thirty-five years of conflict. In January 2015, Zahra Orna Kazemi participates with Untitled to the show The Collective organised by Theca Gallery, at Palazzo Bocconi in Milan (Italy). MOSTRA PERSONALE SOLO SHOW Naissance, French Cultural Center of Afghanistan (FCC), Kabul, Afghanistan 2013 GROUP SHOWS The Collective, Palazzo Bocconi (Azimut Consulenza SIM), presented by Theca Gallery, Milan, Italy, 2015 Art Amongst War: Visual Culture in Afghanistan, Sarnoff Museum of New Jersey, USA, 2014 Ten to Twelve canvas project, contemporary painting, Milan, Italy, th Afghan Contemporary Art Prize, final exhibition, Turquoise Mountain, Bagh-e Babur, Kabul, 2013 Beirut Contemporary Art Fair, Beirut, Lebanon, 2013 Alghuchack, Taasha artistic group, Bameyan Hall, Bameyan province, Afghanistan, 2013 Se Nuqt, Three dots Exhibition, Char Sawq Gallery, Mashhad, Iran, 2012 Mashhad Youth Visual Arts, Imam Reza Galler, Mashhad, Iran, 2012 Afghanistan Centre of Arts Exhibition, Afghan students unity, Mashhad, Iran, 2011 Mashhad Youth Visual Arts, Imam Reza Galler, Mashhad, Iran, 2011 AWARDS Finalist of the 4th Afghan Contemporary Art Prize, Kabul, 2013

4 Untitled Gouache on wassli paper, 30 38cm, 2013

5 Untitled Gouache on wassli paper, 30 38cm, 2013

6 THECA GALLERY CONTEMPORARY ART Zahra Orna Kazemi Selected Artworks MILANO ITALY Via Tadino, 22 Milano