Sepideh Dashti, Counterpoint
On view January 24 - February 24, 2022
Counterpoint, includes recent and new photography, textile, and video installation work by Sepideh Dashti. Using personal and marginalized methods of research, as an artist Dashti performs her bodily material, stitching her hair and blurring the boundaries between languages, to challenge ideas of femininity and domesticity and depict the experience of her diaspora.
Not all diasporas are the same. Not all female experiences of oppression are the same. Dashti’s experience as an Iranian diasporic woman is fragmented along ethnic, religious, social, political, and class lines. These fragments pose challenges to her attempts to bind with others and find solidarity based in multiculturalism and ethnicity. Dashti establishes her body as an integral material in her art practices to make the explanation of her experiences and challenges possible. She seeks to claim her body across multiple media to question her identity with regard to the deplorable conditions of history, language, and culture existing between different spaces she has occupied.
Counterpoint is on view in the Ruffin Gallery through February 24, 2022.
LIST OF WORKS
- No East, No West, 2020, photograph, human hair, handwritten Qafiyeh fabric (grid fabric), 42”x 50”
- Gisoo, 2021, photograph, female head hair, crochet tulips, bullets, 20”x 42”
- Kakool, 2021, photograph, male head hair, crochet tulips, female hair balls, 22”x 22”
- Tangled, 2021, hand embroidery (human head hair, Qafiyeh fabric (grid fabric)), 57”x 49”
- Zolf, 2021, appliqued embroidery (human head hair), Kerman traditional line embroidery, 61”x 70”
- Interweave, 2021, one channel video performance
ABOUT SEPIDEH DASHTI
Dashti is an emerging interdisciplinary artist who lives in Memphis, TN, USA. She got her MFA from Western University in London, Ontario, Canada in 2020. Her artistic practice is related to exploring her body by creating performance, video, photography, and installation. Through multiple discourses and contexts, she is always rediscovering, reinventing, and reinterpreting her Iranian identity, as a pivotal point for exploring her work in the multiple and heterogeneous context. She is also interested to cross field appropriation of the dominant philosophy and the technology of video with her lived experiences in the process of making art work. Dashti earned her BFA, Fine Arts Studio Practice-Intensive Studio Specialization, Honours Digital Arts Communication Minor, at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada with the Dean’s Honours List. She is also a recipient of various awards such as the Lynn Holmes Memorial Award and Curator’s Choice Award during her BFA. She received the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship in social sciences and humanities research in 2019. Her work has been showcased nationally and internationally.
RUFFIN GALLERY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
Since 2008, the Ruffin Gallery is an active part of the Studio Art program. Each year the gallery hosts four to six exhibits that serve as the University’s most important showcase for contemporary art and are an integral part of the Studio Art experience. Students are involved with the production and installation of these exhibitions and gain valuable experience in the handling and hanging of important works of all types. The gallery hosts a show by each year’s Ruffin Distinguished Artist-in-Residence. Every spring the gallery is the site of the Fourth-Year Thesis and Aunspaugh Fellows Exhibitions. The openings are important occasions when the whole studio program gathers to
celebrate the successful completion of the major. In addition to the Ruffin Gallery, student and visiting artist work is frequently shown in the RuffStuff and Media Galleries on the first floor of Ruffin Hall.
ON VIEW
January 24 - February 24, Ruffin Gallery Open Monday - Friday from 9 AM - 5 PM
ADDRESS
Ruffin Gallery
179 Culbreth Road
Charlottesville, VA 22903
PRESS CONTACT
Liza Pittard, Marketing & Visiting Artist Coordinator, University of Virginia Art Department
FOR MORE INFORMATION
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