Sara Rahbar
dal 18/5/2011 al 16/6/2011
Segnalato da
18/5/2011
Sara Rahbar
Hilger Contemporary, Wien
I have no faith left for the devil to take. In her work, themes of uprooting, disappointment with the "promised land," dual culture, war, trauma and scarring refer directly to her personal experience. Her originality is in bringing art-not only in its new forms, such as video and performance, but also in traditional forms that have been reappraised today-onto social and political terrain.
One of the major characteristics of Rahbar's work is to restore the dialogue between history and aesthetics. Her originality is in bringing art—not only in its new forms, such as video and performance, but also in traditional forms that have been reappraised today—onto social and political terrain. With her Flags, as with her photographic compositions, or in turn her recent hybridizations that no longer take the flag as their basis but instead tarpaulins and bags used by US soldiers, she invents a new relationship to history.
A rapport that is individual, moral, social and political. But also, above all, a rapport that is artistic, characterized by an aesthetic that is "always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo."
Her work is imbued with the magic that is inherent to the use of historically charged materials and forms. In her work, themes of uprooting, disappointment with the "promised land," dual culture, war, trauma and scarring refer directly to her personal experience.
Though political, her work is no less intimate, committed as it is to the re-elaboration of personal memories. Her work offers us a reflection on art and its ability to intervene in civic life at a specific register. A register that is not the only political statement, in which the intention and the demonstration take precedence over form, but the combination of this statement with visual formalization.
Aesthetics, and its corollary, the sense of beauty, situate political discourse in a time that transcends the immediacy of the present, just as it transposes a local context into a universal space.
Born in Tehran, Iran in 1976, Sara Rahbar and her family fled Iran during the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution and the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war. Rahbar went on to study interdisciplinary studies for five years in New York and fine art at London’s Central Saint Martins College of Art in 2005. After spending several years living and working between Tehran and New York, Rahbar is currently based in New York.
Her work ranges from photography to sculpture to installation and explores issues of belonging, memory and displacement. But in the end Rahbar’s work is always stemming from her own life and is exceedingly autobiographical.
In the past few years she has become well known for her ongoing “Flag series”
(2008–Present) in which traditional fabrics and objects are reworked as collages that form various incarnations of the American and Iranian flags, exploring ideas of national belonging, as well as the conflicting role of flags as symbols of ideological and nationalistic violence. Her work has been shown internationally in places like; Cairo, Mumbai, Dubai, Madrid, Vienna, Moscow, New York, London and Paris and is held in multiple collections worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Saatchi Collection in London, The Burger Collection in Hong Kong and the Devi Art Foundation in Gurgaon, India.
Image: Underneath my skin you go, there like blood you flow
Opening: Thursday, May 19, 2011, 7 pm
The artist will be present.
Galerie Hilger contemporary
Dorotheergasse 5, 1010 Vienna
Hours:
Tues-Fri 10 a.m.-6 p.m.
Thurs 10 a.m.-8 p.m.
Sat 10 a.m.-4 p.m.