Bita Fayyazi, Choo Choo! Here We Come..., Mixed-media sculpture (plaster, metal rod, ready made galvanized objects, carpet weaving yarn, resin), H: 160 x L: 46 x W: 32cm, 2011.

Gallery IVDE
Al Quoz 1, street 8, Al Serkal Av. # 17
+ 97 1 (0)4 323 5052
Dubai
Obscure Stream of Life,
But I’m Still Having My Afternoon Cuppa
October 25-December 01, 2011

For her new show, Iranian sculptor and installation artist Bitta Fayyazi continues to deal with fundamental ideas and concepts that have underpinned her previous two, critically-acclaimed shows Performance 1388/2010 and Grind, in which society at large is assessed and evaluated through an intensely personal prism of Fayyazi’s own emotions and feelings. The chaos and disorder of everyday life, the frailty and futility of thwarted human ambition and greed, set within a framework referencing structures of birth, life and decay, all refracted through Bita Fayyazi’s practice, here becomes a powerful set of artworks.

The nine mannequin pieces in the show, ("oddities and hybrids," according to the artist) continue Fayyazi’s formal investigations into seemingly disparate materials and found items, woven together with ostentatious care and prominent knots, ties and bindings. Balls of yarn, hair and wire mesh are wrapped to chimney hood vents, funnels, fiberglass, armatures and plaster, creating grotesque figures that ooze (literally, in some cases) with angst-ridden turmoil. In these figures, Fayyazi presses deformities, desecrations and physical exaggerations into service of her analogies of a ‘crippled, dysfunctional society’. The anger is resigned and philosophical, the mannequins are comically absurd in their twisted impotence and thwarted physicality.

There has always been an appealing dark underside to Fayyazi’s work, since she burst into international prominence during the 1990s with her outsized ceramic cockroaches and various series in which man and beast co-exist suspiciously in an unforgiving global machine. In Obscure Stream of Life, But I’m Still Having my Afternoon Cuppa, Fayyazi again presents work that takes an uncompromising stance against social, political and emotional tyranny with wit, black humour and Fayyazi’s highly personalized love of craft, mythology and representation.

Bita Fayyazi was born in Tehran in 1962. She lived in England for seven years, returning to Iran in 1980, where she lives, works and teaches in Tehran. Her background is in ceramics and sculpture. Part of the vanguard of post-revolutionary Iranian artists to exhibit in the West, she rose quickly to prominence and has since shown in galleries in Europe, India, Africa and Middle East. Her work has been acquired by collections worldwide, including La Fabrica (Benetton Group Communication Centre) in Italy and the Simon de Pury Collection in Geneva.

Bita Fayyazi, The Purple Scream (Djighe Banafsh), Fiberglass, acrylic and watercolor, 31 x 27 x 35 cm, 2008-9, Ed. of 7.

Bita Fayyazi, The Body Builder (Badansaz O Bachehaash, Fiberglas, acrylic, and watercolor, 2008-2009, 91 x 4 x 30 cm, Ed of 3.

Bita Fayyazi at Fabrica in 2007, photo by Fabrica, Reed Young.

B21 Gallery
52182, Al Quoz 3
Dubai
+971 4 340 39 65
Bita Fayyazi
There Goes the Neighbourhood
Sculpture and Installation
March 17-April 05, 2009

Any project of Bita Fayyazi starts with her capacity to share and understand another's "state of mind" or emotion. Most of the time, it is only at the moment when her empathy turns into compassion that she feels mature enough to start shaping her subject. What Fayyazi has termed There Goes the Neighbourhood is a collection of disparate figures, at once typical, sincere and ironic. She captures the odd diversity of life that proliferates on the streets of her native Tehran and infuses each character with this particular detail that reveals the true self. Through and beneath the disguise of every figure, Fayyazi tackles the fundamental themes of society, popular culture and religion.

We see people going about their daily business: the peculiar pedestrian, families rich and poor, hopeful and destitute, a family picnic astride a motorbike, conjoined twins, a hulk of a man (a body builder). Then there is the crooked father with one leg in the air on whose foot balances his entire family; his pregnant wife gazes worriedly as their infant boy screams and their two older children gaze outward, bewildered by what the future holds in store for the them. Meanwhile, veiled women abound in different positions and movements: walking, carrying their groceries, praying, and towing their children along.

In a country as socially restrictive as Iran, where people’s lives are ruled by an endless barrage of "bans," the importance of demonstrating self-assertion, in one’s life and to the world outside, is paramount. There Goes the Neighbourhood assembles the different experiences and attitudes of various people from the hustle and bustle of the Tehran streets into her vibrant characters, and thus into the gallery space. Captured in fiberglass and polyester and deftly painted, or ‘dressed-up’, by Rokni Haerizadeh in bold, over-glossed colours, the various characters — mostly between 70 and 90 cm in height — provide a zealous evocation of a their interior and exterior "worlds."

The individuals are characterized, for example, by the body builder who carries his baby with one arm and holds his over-dressed daughter’s hand with the other. His head and feet are very small and contrast comically with his bulbous upper body, as if body mass can compensate for lack of mental capacity.

Equally self-conscious and materialistically driven focused are the ‘uptown’ trendy boys smoking cigarettes. One Mohawk-sporting boy and his girlfriend — both, we learn, from a religious and traditional background — walk alongside each other, content that through their rebellious and angry appearance they have compensated for a general frustration with life.

Bitas’s bustling families bring yet another dynamic to the show. There is Haadj Aghaa between his two wives playing with rosary beads, and then Akram Khanoum, an obese chadori woman busy gossiping with her likewise sisters. In another scene, she is accompanied by her fashionable, spiky haired son Kambiz, bedecked with a pair of hanging baggy pants, Bluetooth headset, multiple necklaces and bracelets. By contrast, we find a husband with his well dressed wife and daughter. The wife looks unsatisfied and probably is; whilst his daughter, with her ‘must-have’ nose-job, looks utterly unhappy.

Walking down the streets of Tehran, one might inadvertently identify these different groups of people and soon after would surely associate them with Fayyazi’s characters. One of her talents is to blithely record the innate qualities of her subjects; observing their flaws and vices while maintaining a rare objectivity. In reinterpreting them with her subtle sense of humor she breathes an almost cognizant life into each of the figures. This maternal sense of empathy is what characterizes Bita Fayyazi’s work best.

in ceramics and keen to collaborate with other artists, Fayyazi subsequently turned to sculpture and installation, experimenting with public art, performance and video. Prompting a new art movement and involving new audiences along the way, she rapidly became one of the few women artists to have achieved a high profile in Iran’s male-dominated art world.

She became known internationally in the 1990s for her witty, captivating installations of thousands of outsize ceramic cockroaches. Part of the vanguard of post-revolutionary Iranian artists to exhibit in the West, Fayyazi rose quickly to prominence and has since shown in galleries in Europe, India, Africa and Middle East. The cockroaches were followed by other series, including wretched, run-over dogs; inquisitive, gossipy crows; and inanimate lizards that appear to scuttle across the gallery floor. She has been represented in many major contemporary art events, including the 2005 Venice Biennale with her installation ‘Kismet’, where golden babies suspended in mid air, slowly dissociate from the reality and find themselves in spinning cocoons thereby realizing their destiny. Last summer, her ambitious installation The Playground, comprising an over-sized stuffed camel and a real-size 2 horsepower Citroen car filled with toys all covered in camouflage, was showcased to great acclaim in the exhibition Orients sans Frontières at the Espace Louis Vuitton in Paris. Most recently, her installation / projection Goli’s Dowry appeared in February 2009 in Thaddaeus Ropac gallery in its Raad O Bargh show in Paris.

Bita Fayyazi, Akram (Akram Khanoum), Fiberglass, acrylic and watercolor, 82 x 30 x 27 cm each, 2008-9, Ed 3 of 6, 1 of 6 and 2 of 6.