The Silent Naretive of Things 2014-2018

Dastan is pleased to announce “The Silent Narrative of Things”, a presentation of Maryam Farhang’s ‘domestic realm’ at Electric Room. The show will be open to public view from February 16 to 21, 2018. The presentation is an installation of ‘home’ and ‘domestic atmosphere’, emphasizing on the interaction between the artist and their surroundings, and the way they lay out their home using art and appropriated objects. The presentation is inspired by the artist’s approach to using a mix of objects and artworks in her house. The installation is complimented by archival videos and a piece of atmospheric music (composed by Kaveh Raad).  

Zarvan Rouhbakhshan, who has been following the artist’s work, describes this show as: “talking about daily life is always accompanied by references to exhaustion, boredom , and routines; while we are living in a world where everything is getting more complicated day by day. This is not palpable because of the technology and easy access to most of the things, because there a general consensus that everything and every action is easier nowadays. On the other hand, in the land we live in, many are experiencing a dual life. Rules and regulations of the private life are far different from those of the public, and to some extents, they are contradictory. In fact, in conditions as such, a painter like Maryam Farhang, using what she sees in her house, shows a personal narrative of what she sees in the world around her; almost all of the objects in her painting belong to her house. Therefore, she is a still-life painter with an imagination for storytelling, who uses visual metaphors in an absence/presence perspective to tell her own story in the still life of her paintings and demonstrate frictions of the life. The animals which possess their own semiotic characteristics, followed by spots, lines, knots and threads, flow the moments of the narration and settle down in the strange presentation of the house.”