Art In America

ONE WORK: ARGHAVAN KHOSRAVI’S “BLACK RAIN”

JPEGs do no favors for Arghavan Khosravi’s work; though they look flat and one-dimensional online, the artist’s canvases are emphatically sculptural in person, with intricate constructions, illusionistic uses of depth and surface, and judicious, almost exclamatory incorporations of found materials. Their complex relations all serve to articulate an Iranian woman’s view of her homeland’s repressive religious and cultural mores. Take Black Rain (2021), from her current exhibition “In Between Places” at Rachel Uffner in New York. Six differently shaped supports made of wood and canvas—discrete picture planes—combine to form a whole. In the foreground, an unnaturally pink-hued hand, cut out of thin wood, curls around the neck of a woman painted on a tall canvas stretched over an eight-inch-deep box. Almost all the works in the exhibition feature a woman with a pensive gaze and redacted facial features—a black rectangle covering her eyes or a chain locking her mouth—who seems to be a psychological stand-in for the artist.

Read More:

https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/aia-reviews/arghavan-khosravi-multipart-painting-freedom-key-1234593254/

Artnet News

‘I Felt in Between Places’: Iranian Artist Arghavan Khosravi on Studying Art in the U.S., and Why She Paints Preoccupied Women

Khosravi recently debuted her first solo show at Rachel Uffner gallery.
Noor Brara

The U.S.-based Iranian painter Arghavan Khosravi’s sculptural, multi-paneled paintings capture the claustrophobia and disorientation of being split between worlds. In her critically acclaimed recent show, “In Between Places” at New York’s Rachel Uffner gallery—which was extended past its original end date several times, and finally closed in mid-June—women assume agency as they move through their daily lives, all the while preoccupied with looming concerns, represented by depictions such as a ball and chain, puppet strings, prayer rugs and other religious objects that seem to hang, quite literally, over their heads. Each work is, Khosravi said, a visual representation of how she feels as an Iranian woman artist living in the U.S. who worries for her family, friends, and women more generally back home. Khosravi sat down with Artnet News to discuss her incredibly successful exhibition, how she came to be a painter, and much more.

To start, I would love to know about your background. Where did you grow up? And when did you first have an inkling that art would be something you’d want to pursue?

I was born in Iran and I spent almost my whole life there. I grew up in Tehran. I think most kids are inclined toward art, to drawing and things like that. My parents were very supportive of me, in part because my father is an architect, so he already had that artistic gene. But in Iran, we need to decide at an early age what our majors will be, in high school. I thought my future career should be something more practical and art could be something beside it. I decided to study mathematics.

Read More:

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/arghavan-khosravi-interview-1986271

Creative Boom

3D paintings by Arghavan Khosravi show her trapped between two worlds

Inspired by the use of stacked perspective in Persian miniature painting and her experiences growing up and living in Iran (where personal freedom remains severely constrained) compared to her life today in America, Arghavan Khosravi's clever, three-dimensional artworks offer a sense of feeling trapped between two worlds. WRITTEN BY: KATY COWAN

Read More:

https://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/in-between-places/

S/Magazine

How Artist Arghavan Khosravi Finds Inspiration During Divisive Times

The word “empowerment” is losing its meaning becoming a buzzword used to sell everything from lipstick to yogurt. But for Arghavan Khosravi, it’s a way to move forward. “I’m not interested in perpetuating notions of cultural exoticism and portrayals of Iranian women as victims,” she explains. “Rather, my work is a vehicle for shifting power, validating personal storytelling, and connecting to universal messages about human rights.” Her paintings, mainly acrylic on found textiles, have a surrealist quality, telling stories of her personal and political experiences.

Read More:

https://smagazineofficial.com/art-culture/how-artist-arghavan-khosravis-anger-fuels-her-inspiration-042320441

The New Yorker Magazine

ART

Arghavan Khosravi

In the sharp-edged dreamworld of Khosravi’s paintings, women inhabit symbolically dense, spatially tricky scenes. Using trompe-l’oeil, shaped canvases, and found textiles, the Iranian painter—who arrived in the U.S. in 2015 and now cannot return, thanks to Trump’s travel ban—forges a melancholic lexicon to reflect on both women’s status in her native country and her own feelings of dislocation. Fragments of classical statuary and bright-red cords (with their dual implications of metaphysical and umbilical binding) embellish her exquisitely painted works, which are inspired by Persian miniatures; they’re also laced with such contemporary details as sweatpants, bubble gum, and an Apple watch. “Architecture of a Moment,” from 2018-19, depicts a palace under siege; a large woman, with her eyes closed and a turtleneck pulled over her mouth, emerges from the structure’s center. Her arms are up in an evocative, ambiguous pose, equal parts physical surrender and spiritual ascension.

— Johanna Fateman

https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/art/arghavan-khosravi

BOMB Magazne

Facing Duality: Arghavan Khosravi Interviewed by Will Fenstermaker

The painter talks about her work across cultures.

I first saw Arghavan Khosravi’s lush and intimate paintings earlier this year at Four, a concise exhibition at Yossi Milo Gallery that featured four young artists curated by Doron Langberg. In Inward Element (2018), a woman folds her legs in a flat plane, framed by a vegetal motif borrowed from Persian textiles. She’s entwined with a second body that is mostly off-frame. Khosravi’s paintings had something of Leonora Carrington’s poignant mysticism and narrative flair, but she combined Persian motifs with material experimentation. Like many critics, I thought Khosravi’s paintings were the standout of the show.

Read More:

https://bombmagazine.org/articles/facing-duality-arghavan-khosravi-interviewed/

It's Nice That

Arghavan Khosravi on her fruitful yet uncertain journey as an Iranian painter

Words Ayla Angelos

Despite having drawn from childhood, it wasn’t until she the age of 12 that Iranian artist Arghavan Khosravi decided to take art a little more seriously. This was when she enrolled in a two-year drawing and painting programme which she attended alongside school. “In Iran, we had to choose between mathematics, biology, liberal arts or art as a major during high school,” Arghavan tells It’s Nice That. “Back then, I thought I should pursue an engineering degree in order to guarantee my future, so I picked mathematics.”

Read More:

https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/arghavan-khosravis-art-180919

Colossal

Meditative Mixed-Media Paintings by Arghavan Khosravi Subtly Address Human Rights Issues

Artist Arghavan Khosravi creates multi-part worlds in her carefully composed paintings. Contemporary human figures commingle with ghostly limbs and classical Greco-Roman sculptures. Bright red lines of string, Persian decorative motifs, and found textiles connect the disparate figures. The artist begins each painting with an intensive brainstorming and research phase, which results in a detailed sketch that outlines about 85% of the completed work.

Read More:

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2019/09/aghravan-khosravi-paintings/

Davis Museum at Wellesley College

Davis Museum at Wellesley College Announces Finalists for Inaugural Prilla Smith Brackett Award

WELLESLEY, Mass. – The Davis Museum at Wellesley College has selected the three finalists for the inaugural Prilla Smith Brackett Award: Lilly Evelet, Arghavan Khosravi, and Yu-Wen Wu. The new biennial award honors an outstanding female visual artist based in the Greater Boston area and recognizes her exceptional contributions to the field and region. The winner will be announced in early September and the Davis Museum will host an event on September 23rd to celebrate the work of the award winner. The Davis will also feature the winning artist on its website.

https://www.wellesley.edu/sites/default/files/assets/departments/davismuseum/news%20imgs/press%20release/prdavispsbawardfinalistsfinal.pdf

Silent Narratives: international and blockbusting A Dialogue between the ancient and present Silk Road in Yinchuan

On June 1, 2019, Museum of Contemporary Art Yinchuan (MOCA Yinchuan) will hold an exhibition entitled Silent Narratives, which tries to break the restrictions of time, space as well as region. The Curator Huang Mei cooperated with MOCA Yinchuan and invited 24 (group) artists from various countries along the Silk Road, such as China, Iraq, Israel, Iran and Turkey to present their contemporary works of art together with some ancient historical documentation about the Silk Road in the same space. The exhibition, with the combination of ancient documentation and contemporary works of art, will create an abstract space which ignores the limitations of time, space, culture, history and geography, making possible the cultural and historical exchanges between ancient and modern works in a silent manner…

http://www.moca-yinchuan.com/chengmoE.asp?newsid=229&aid=193

Museum of Contemporary Art Yinchuan - Silent Narratives

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E-Flux.com

Curator: Mei Huang
 

“The title Silent Narratives was taken from Chaim Potok’s novel The Chosen, in which he describes: ‘I’ve begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own,’” explains Mei Huang in an interview about her curated exhibition Silent Narratives. The exhibition displays the archive of ancient artifacts of the Silk Road in the same space as the contemporary works of 25 artists from various countries along its route, such as China, Iraq, Israel, Iran, Palestine and Lebanon. Silent Narratives makes the cultural and historical exchanges possible between ancient and modern work silently, ignoring the limitations of time and space. As Roberto Mangabeira Unge has stated in The Self Awakened: “Any social theory that would escape the illusions of false necessity without surrendering to the fantasies of an unrestrained utopianism must make sense of this clash between the self-fulfilling prophecies and the recalcitrant facts.” Silent Narratives is not only related to the past, but also takes the present into account, creating narratives among the different struggles faced by the existing societies along its path. Hence, the ancient Silk Road is just an introduction, which invites us to view the world from the perspectives of the history, culture and politics of globalization.

https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/270567/silent-narratives/

Meet the miart Early Birds: 10 Fairgoers Share Their Highlights of Milan’s International Art Fair

Valeria Napoleone

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What are some of the best presentations you’ve seen so far? I always find incredible new artists and I love the “generations” section, it’s my favorite. It tells you how well managed and curated the fair is. The design section has also come along nicely, it’s improved a lot since the beginning. It’s well integrated. It’s not big but they picked great galleries.

The emergent section is also very interesting, I always find something for me as well. I really liked this younger artist  from Iran, Arghavan Khosravi, at a Brussels gallery, Stems. In recent years we’ve lost the appreciation of mastery of technique, which is really the case with her paintings. Whenever I find a new artist at fairs I’m really very excited. It’s not easy to be surprised nowadays, or to be impressed either.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/meet-the-people-of-miart-1509460

9 Exceptional Artworks from Spring/Break Art Show 2019 that Aren't Penile- Artspace

ARGHAVAN KHOSRAVI
She Had a Dream, 2018
Curated by Kristen Smoragiewicz

Born soon after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iranian-born artist Arghavan Khosravi watched her country transform from a Western-friendly monarchy into a suppressive republic. Her paintings reflect her experience as a child and teenager living what she felt was a "double life," one that required her to adhere to strict Islamic Law in public, and in private, allowed her the freedom to think and act freely, according to the press release. In She Had a Dream, the artist incorporates an actual rug, cut and applied to the painting, its fringe hanging around the edges of the canvas. Says the press release, "Compositionally the work draws influence from the tradition of Persian miniature painting; utilizing stacked perspective, cutaway views of architecture, bold color, rich detail, and frontal or three quarter views of faces." Khosravi earned her MFA from RISD last year, and has previously exhibited at Fridman Gallery, the Newport Art Museum, and the Seattle Art Fair, among others.

https://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/art-fairs/9-individual-artworks-from-springbreak-art-show-that-didnt-involve-penises-55964

Photography and Paintings by Iranian Women in the U.S.: Fashion, Sexuality and Digital Tehran

BBC.com

عکس و نقاشی زنان ایرانی در آمریکا: مد، سکسوالیته و تهران دیجیتالی

پانته آ بهرامیروزنامه نگار

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سیمای پرندگان نام نمایشگاهی است که با آثار ۱۹ هنرمند از ۹ کشور در خاورمیانه و شمال آفریقا هم اکنون در موزه هنری نیوپورت در آمریکا براگزار می شود. از ۱۹ هنرمند شرکت کننده ۹ نفر آنها ایرانی یا ایرانی - آمریکایی هستند.

فرانسین وایس طراح نمایشگاه معتقد است، هر چند نگارخانه ها و نمایشگاه های زیادی در آمریکا به آثار هنر اسلامی یا هنر در دنیای عرب و ایران پرداخته اند، امااین نمایشگاه در ابتدا پاسخی به حوادث ۱۱ سپتامبر و سپس بهار عربی بوده است. او ادامه می دهد: "اگرچه تمرکز نمایشگاه بر روی یک منطقه است، اما به این مفهوم نیست که هنرمندان شرکت کننده دارای هویت یا تجربیات یکسانی هستند، بلکه تمرکز آثار بر روی تکامل هنری در پیش زمینه تاریخی، فرهنگی و جغرافیایی است و به ویژه آنکه نظری هم بر هویت فرهنگی، مرزها و مهاجرت که موضوعی روزآمد هست نیز دارد."

سمیرا علی خانزاده، گوهر دشتی، مینو امامی، شادی قدیریان، پوران خنجی، ارغوان خسروی، آزیتا مرادخانی، سمن سجاسی و هایده شفیعی هنرمندان ایرانی این نمایشگاه هستند. دیگر هنرمندان از کشورهای عراق، لبنان، کویت، فلسطین، عربستان، سوریه و جمهوری آذربایجان هستند.

http://www.bbc.com/persian/arts-46153549