Title: “Zero – Waste”
Mahdieh Abolhasan
December 2021
Tehran, IranShahr Gallery
Curator of this edition: Neda Darzi
Documentary film production: Harf-e-Honar Studio
Virtual space partner: Peyvast platform
Mahdieh Abolhasan
Title: Jali
Technique: Recycled Cardboard, Plexiglass, Drawing
Dimensions: 30x20x40 cm
Year: 2021
Collection: Personal Collection
Those parts that have been carved, burned, peeled, and discarded are what is hidden in my works but embedded within us. These parts are like wounds that have healed over time, and I have merely opened them to the mirror. Time does not affect the mirror. The mirror is a “heterotopia” beyond the concept of time a place where you “exist” and at the same time “do not exist.” Such wounds are only forgotten by remembering them.
What appears in my works are volumes that have survived the wounds of destruction. Each piece signifies a person who draws strength from the remnants of wounds, with only the ashes reminding us that something once existed without leaving a trace. With each passing moment, something within us dies, and the wounds and their repetitions in layers and mirrors in my works are testimony to the experience of the ashes. This experience is not just about forgetting, but about forgetting the act of forgetting itself, an experience of erasing something that leaves no residue. The layers of time are as faithful as a mirror, revealing only the truth to you. The image you see in the mirror of my works are the remnants of our wounds wounds that even the passage of time cannot erase and can always serve as a new beginning. Wounds, no matter how deep, heal but leave a mark. The impact of the wounds is not in their healing but in leaving their trace on our consciousness. In the installation section of this collection, I invite you to freely read and arrange these works. Reflect on the wounds, disassemble them, and create your own book with new awareness.
Biography:
Mahdieh Abolhasan, born in 1980, professionally learned design alongside Farhad Gavzan and started her work with the Design House in 2010. She has participated in several group exhibitions both domestically and internationally, including the Turkey Art Fair. Abolhasan’s works involve design and sculpture using layered dense cardboard, which she then carves and adds various forms to, creating multiple holes and additional volumes.
Mahdieh Abolhasan creates her works by harnessing the creative power of destruction in a space that lies between radical activism and composed conceptual works. The artist’s self-constructed entirety a dense, multi-layered material is methodically attacked in a way that is not so much self-destructive as it is self-critical. This intervention in what she has created herself aims to generate something new, maintaining a critical and skeptical relationship with the initial structure.
