FARIDEH LASHAI: AFLOAT OVER UNDULATIONS


Curator: Sam Samiee
Technical director: Kambiz Safari
Coordinator: Azarnoosh Ghazanfari

This exhibition would not have been possible without the support of

HH Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan bin Khalifa Al Nahyan

Mohammed Afkhami Collection
Maryam Massoudi
Farhad Bakhtiar Bakhtiari
Mana Jalalian
The estate of Farideh Lashai

Who have generously lent the artworks for the exhibition

Quotes from Lashai’s auto fiction The Jackal Came are from the forthcoming translation by Sohrab Mahdavi


16 November 2022 - 7 February 2023
10:00 AM - 8:00 PM daily
Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi




The current exhibition presents the concluding artworks of the late Farideh Lashai’s (1944-2014) oeuvre in five video installations. These works incorporate her artistic life: as an abstract painter, playful experimenter with new technologies and intellectual who excelled in bringing her aesthetic genius closer to her role as a writer, thinker, and translator. A prominent figure in global Modern art history, Lashai’s career was rooted in her primary education in German studies and translation. She then successfully practised design, later culminating her multifaceted artistic practice as an abstract painter.

Farideh Lashai: Afloat Over Undulations presents a seamless balance between her conceptual and historical thinking and the ever-present beauty of colour and brushstrokes. Thought-provoking work titles and video loops frame indices of painterly ventures. A playful animated rabbit leads us across works, through different times and landscapes, bringing lightness and innocence integral to the desiring curiosity of an artist's endeavours.

Passing through and beyond the political conditions of Lashai's time, the protagonist rabbit escapes into daydreaming, staring at the ungraspable, undulating reflection of moonlight. Leading further down the rabbit hole, a Cheshire cat appearing in the gestalt of the artist's native country, stares out at the viewer with mocking eyes. Lashai's ethical and aesthetic desires crystalize in her homage to Charlie Chaplin and Umm-Kulthum in the video installation, El Amal (The Desire), at the entrance to the exhibition room. The works in the exhibition are accompanied by some quotations from Lashai's best-seller, The Jackal Came, written in Persian, with an English translation forthcoming.

This exhibition is organised by Abu Dhabi Art in collaboration with the Photography Studio, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Farideh Lashai Foundation, Basel Switzerland and Leila Heller Gallery

Online talk on Farideh Lashai: 'Afloat Over Undulations'


The talk is presented by Curator Sam Samiee and moderated by Abu Dhabi Art Director Dyala Nusseibeh.

Artist

Farideh Lashai

Farideh Lashai

Artist

Farideh Lashai

Artist

Curator

Sam Samie

Sam Samie

Sam Samie