FIELD MEETING TAKE 6: THINKING COLLECTIONS

Ali Shayesteh (Hamadan)

 

Thousand Curses on This and on That

Pop-up Installation

Synopsis: In two different series, the artist uses ten years worth of compiled personal notes and pieces of rag found in his studio to create works using the hypnosis of language to manifest new realities. Despite Shayesteh initial attempts to destroy these notes, he later found remnants of them in his studio, viewing this discovery as a spiritual resurrection. Using humanity’s dictims, the artist addresses society’s restrictions through idioms and expressions, to transform them into timeless liberating insights. Deriving from this original series, Shayesteh gives up the use of language and words in his second series, producing work made up of simple utterances which disband the formula of language.
 
Watch video of Ali’s Pop-up here
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Ali Shayesteh was born in 1984 in Hamadan, Iran, right in the midst of the eight years’ Iran-Iraq war. Influenced by the Islamic Revolution’s rigid idealism, Shayesteh’s artworks grew into personal reflections on the living conditions of that period. Through different series of work, he has experimented with various tools and techniques and rejected to follow any stable methods or styles. His artworks have been displayed in eminent Iranian galleries such as Azad, Assar, Mohsen, Delgosha, Etemad, Mah-e Mehr, and Lajevardi Foundation as well as the Giorgio Cini Foundation (Italy) and Pratt Institute of New York (USA).