Dear Fractured Stones,
22.11.2021 - 18.01.2022
Curated by
Baharak Omidfard
The exhibition Dear Fractured Stones, brings together a group of artworks exploring the nature of stone as material, as medium, and as metaphor. The exhibition will highlight the theme – (re)collect/(re)connect – one that demonstrates a variety of artistic strategies for repairing and re-establishing connections. Fractured stones can be understood as former parts of larger units whose connections are currently broken. A reparative attitude would thus allow these fragments to come together to form a unit, a whole.
Dear Fractured Stones, assembles nine artists from Iran and the Iranian diaspora. Although the presented works combine diverse art practices, they all share visual and content-related references to the themes of collection and archive. In this sense, fractured stones – whether depicted through installation, photography, as objects, or in painting – are transformed into condensed information carriers capable of absorbing and storing unknown narratives and, thus, of making such narratives visible. Behind each transformation lies an intention not only to not forget but also to actively remember. Such an approach shapes one’s self-image and worldview, and the selected works explore individual and collective memories, offering expanded insights into site-specific culture, history, politics, and mysticism, as well as into rituals connected with tomb culture and the occult.
What references to our present day and to our lived environment are contained within the idea (re)collect/(re)connect, and which strategies might serve as reparative in the context of an artwork?
Formal and playful in syntax, Dear Fractured Stones, refers to the standard salutation of a letter and thus suggests a communicative exchange, one in which the fractured stone now has a chance to reply.
_ Baharak Omidfard
Baharak Omidfard is a curator with both an artistic and academic background. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Communication from Tehran University of Art, Iran, and was later awarded a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Art History from the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany, with a focus on modern and contemporary art. In her academic work, Baharak Omidfard has extensively explored the topic of “farewell” in contemporary art. She has curated exhibitions for experimental art in Germany, France and Switzerland. She received a curatorial grant from Rhineland-Palatinate and has gathered work experience in several museums. Currently, she is interested in the interface between art and public spaces and her most recent research focus deals with artistic and research methods of “connection” and “disconnection”.