Persian artist Nazgol Ansarinia will speak about how she examines the systems, architectural structures, and routines that condition daily experience and relate to larger social contexts in her art practice. She will be in conversation with Dr. Fereshteh Daftari, guest curator of the exhibition Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians—The Mohammed Afkhami Collection, currently on view at Asia Society Museum until May 8, 2022.

Speakers

Born in Tehran, Iran, Nazgol Ansarinia engages with the ways that architecture delineates public and private spaces, and explores the social and political implications of this divide. Ansarinia utilizes a range of media, including sculpture, installation, drawing, and video. She earned her BA from the London College of Communication and her MFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. She has been featured in several group exhibitions around the world, and has had solo exhibitions in London, Paris, Dubai, and Milan. Her work is included in the collections of the Queensland Art Gallery, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Tate Gallery, and the British Museum. She was awarded the Abraaj Capital Art Prize in March 2009. Ansarinia lives and works in Tehran.

Dr. Fereshteh Daftari received her PhD in Art History from Columbia University. During her tenure at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1988–2009), she curated a number of international exhibitions, including Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking (2006). As an independent curator and scholar, she has continued writing and curating international exhibitions of Middle Eastern art, with a focus on the modern and contemporary art of Iran. Daftari has published widely. Her most recent book is titled Persia Reframed: Iranian Visions of Modern and Contemporary Art (London: I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury, 2019).