Middle East & Africa

Nazgol Ansarinia

From the reflections/refractions series

2012

$From the reflections/refractions series: 8 August 2011, front page$

$From the reflections/refractions series: Embassies of Zionist Regime Attached in India and Georgia Explosion of Car Bomb in Front of Israeli Embassy in New Delhi$

$From the reflections/refractions series: Ranking of Journalists and Reporters National Media Reporters and Journalist to Be Ranked$

From the reflections/refractions series: 8 August 2011, front page

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Reflections/Refractions by Nazgol Ansarinia is a series of collages composed from Iranian newspaper articles. The geometric forms constructed from these source materials reference traditional patterns in Islamic architectural design. More specifically, they are arranged based on a form of Iranian mirror mosaic called ayene kari, which renders the original newspaper texts mostly illegible. These three small-scale collage from the series feature content from Iranian newspapers discussing current political and economic issues in the country. The abstracted compositions consist of overall patterns of various sized triangles; a typical motif in Islamic geometric design. Employing traditional Iranian art-making techniques as both a formal and conceptual strategy, the work depicts the anxiety generated by bureaucracy and Iranian state structures. It also addresses themes of representation, veracity, imperfection, and the corruption of the dissemination of information. In this sense, the work is a reflection of Iranian society and how it is represented in state media. For the artist, processes of fragmentation, construction, and deconstruction tether this series together, re-presenting her experience of daily life in Tehran; as well as the complex relationship between private and public spaces throughout the city.

Nazgol Ansarinia examines the systems and networks that underwrite her daily life. Born and raised in Tehran, she dissects, interrogates, and recasts everyday objects and events to draw out their relationships to the contemporary Iranian experience. She reveals the inner workings of a social system by taking apart its components before reassembling them to uncover collective assumptions and their underlying rules of engagement. Her work is characterized by an emphasis on research and analysis that is a legacy of her design background, as well as by her continued engagement with critical theory. Her mode of working covers diverse media—video, three-dimensional printed models, municipal murals and drawings—and subjects as varied as automated telephone systems, American security policy, the memories associated with a family house, and the patterns of Persian carpets.

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Nazgol Ansarinia From the reflections/refractions series

Nazgol Ansarinia

From the reflections/refractions series