Nazgol Ansarinia

Green Art Gallery, Dubai

London, Green Cardamom, Interior Renovations, Tehran, 2010, 2010
Dubai, Green Art Gallery, Statue of Limitation, 2013

Nazgol Ansarinia is an avant-garde multimedia artist whose work challenges the constraints and systems present in everyday objects, routines, and experiences. Ansarinia often seeks to unmask the inner workings of our social system by dissecting its various components, reconstructing them to uncover assumptions, connections and underlying rules of engagement. 

Mendings, the title of this series describes its creation process. Her method begins by cutting her chosen object in half; equal portions are then removed and the reduced segments are reunited to form a whole. Ansarinia chooses familiar subjects commonly found in Persian interiors. After each adjustment Ansarinia unveils a newly born object, gifting it with its own entity and identity. Whilst the mended household items maintain their symmetry and functionality, their new form and raw seam create an unsightly inconvenience. This deliberate interruption diminishes the object whilst also deconstructing its preconceived perceptions; redefining the object to reveal something hidden, forgotten or even new.

In the present work, Ansarinia explores and manipulates a Persian carpet, sewing the two pieces to form a disjointed whole form. This altered carpet is representative of a changed object, retaining a memory of displacement in its very physicality; it seems to encompass a sentiment of loss. Suggesting a parallel tension between the private and the public, Ansarinia investigates public constraints and domestic life faced in Iran by visually manipulating the archetypal Persian carpet. Her works are increasingly included in prestigious museum exhibitions. Most recently at the Reitberg in Zurich, the Brunei Gallery, the School of Oriental and African Studies, London and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit.

Ansarinia takes everyday objects whose function and meaning is universally recognised, discarding their original purpose and reinstating them slightly altered in a domestic setting. Her work is an interpretation of our lives, our environment and our perception about ordinary items and rituals which are often taken for granted. These objects which can be found easily in the classic Iranian interior, are crafted by the artist in a conceptual way and are reintroduced for the public to engage and explore.