Aphrodite Désirée Navab “I Am Not a Miniature”
Soho20 Chelsea Gallery
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In her new series, I Am Not a Miniature, Navab takes on the exclusively male artistic tradition of miniature painting, by performing it and including her own story. The marks on the artist’s skin form a canvas interwoven with the marks of the projected painting, where miniature becomes monumental and personal becomes political, bridging the histories of once enemy empires— Persian, Greek and Ottoman. From the flesh of her own tri-cultural heritage, the photographs travel somewhere between private graffiti and public tattoo. Navab’s abdomen serves as the site of the intersections of competing cultures and politics, where Alexander the Great is depicted in Persian miniatures, or Adam and Eve are depicted in an Ottoman one, or a miniature begun in Shiraz is then completed in Istanbul. I Am Not a Miniature invites us to imagine an alternative collaboration between differing cultures than domination or demonization. Aphrodite Désirée Navab is an artist based in New York City of Iranian and Greek descent (b. Isfahan, Iran). In 2004 she completed a doctorate in Art Education at Columbia University. She received her BA magna cum laude in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard College in 1993. Navab’s art has been featured in over one hundred exhibitions and performances around the world and is included in a number of permanent collections. Her art was showcased in the museum exhibition and catalogue, Through the Lens: Photography from the Permanent Collection, at the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami. The exhibition featured only 100 significant photographs from more than 1000 photographic holdings: from Julia Margaret Cameron and Walker Evans to Cindy Sherman and Gregory Crewdson.
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Schedule
from October 29, 2013 to November 23, 2013
Opening Reception on 2013-11-07 from 18:00 to 20:00