Bahareh Khoshooee “The Gap”

Rawson Projects

[Image: Video still from The Slow Betrayal of Our Bodies by Forces We Cannot Master (2016)]

This event has ended.

Rawson Projects presents the second iteration of A Process Series, a sequence of mini solo exhibitions that invites each artist to transform the gallery space in order to present and explore the inspiration behind their most recent work.

From March 24 to April 2, Bahareh Khoshooee will present The Gap, the artist’s first solo show in New York.

Artist statement:

“The Gap investigates the fluidity of identity (or as Marx would put it: Gattungswesen) in relation to society. Immigration was an epiphany for me; my comprehension of the essence of identity has drastically transformed and evolved to a new form. The amalgam of a self-assured liberal woman and a perplexed new-come immigrant led my artistic practice to a new level; one’s socio-economic class could drastically change from one environment to another, one country to another, and thus would the notion of identity.

Confabulation (fabricating memories unintentionally) has become a means of resistance, to fill the gaps of identity, to hold the fragments of self together. I question the difference between confabulators and gas-lighters, false memory and alternative facts. More than a year ago during a visit in Iran, I purchased a vintage point-and-shoot Yashica film camera and a handful of expired Fuji/AGFA/Konica films. The intention was to record memories through a defective machine/system to imitate the way my brain records them. The images as a result were visually unclear and abstracted, with moments of clarity in representation (vivid memory) here and there to grasp on. I developed the film upon my return to America, however, never touched them over the past year. I purposefully attempted to detach myself from the physical and visual representation of a memory produced by machine.

I use my body as a tool and my performance as a process in creating visual imaginary liminal spaces and self-estranged characters. Body as the physical representation of human’s conscious being, mostly fails to truly represent ‘who we are’ and yet it is the only physical output of us, it is attached to ‘us.’ Using my body, I invoke the viewer to exist in a conflicted state; at once immersed in my perspective and at the same time aware of the farce; the experience of being the other and being the first person, back and forth.”

Bahareh Khoshooee was born in Tehran, Iran, in the year of the goat, 1991. The artist received her BA in Industrial Design from University of Tehran and is currently an MFA candidate at University of South Florida. Her work is to be soon featured in the Museum of Fine Arts Saint Petersburg, USF Contemporary Art Museum, and ACRE Projects, and she will serve as an artist-in-residence in Ox-Bow residency. Her recent two-person exhibitions include MirrorDrain (Centre Gallery) and Milk Spreads Its Coat (PortSpace) with Ben Galaday, and RunRunRun a collaboration with Victoria Trespando (William and Nancy Oliver Gallery).

Khoshooee’s work has been featured in The Huffington Post, The Guardian, HyperAllergic, Artnet News, Vice, The Metro, and The Creators Project.