Iran Inside Out
June 28, 2009 Back to News
The line outside the Chelsea Museum on Thursday night spills down the block, a thick stream of stylishly dressed New Yorkers batting at the humid summer air with impromptu fans fashioned from the postcard invitation to the "Iran Inside Out" exhibit. There are Americans in skinny jeans toting Vespa helmets, Europeans in open collared shirts and asymmetrical dresses, and Iranians--hyphenated and non--in cocktail attire, a few sporting green ribbon accessories.
Though not atypical for New York's art gallery district, it is a scene hard to reconcile with the bleak and scattered images coming out of Iran these past few weeks. The link between art and politics may be well established, but what of art openings?
Inside the museum, beautiful people mill about, circling the drawings, paintings, sculpture, sound and video installations of 56 contemporary Iranian artists, the largest exhibition of its kind ever to be shown in New York. Spread over three floors, the show is divided into five sections, each with a provocative title: In Search of the Axis of Evil, From Iran to Queeran and Everything in Between, The Culture Shop: Special Sale on Stereotypes--All Must Go!, Iran Recycled: From Vintage to Vogue, and Where in the World: City Quiz.
It's a lot to process at once.
Sam Bardaouil, the show's curator, was looking for under 15 artists when he approached Leila Heller, longtime Madison Avenue gallery owner and godmother to Iranian artists trying to make it in New York. "Basically, I gave him the number of, like, 100 artists and four galleries in Tehran and Europe," Heller says on the phone the next day. The show quickly ballooned. "The more he researched, the more he realized how much great art there is out there," she says.
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Though not atypical for New York's art gallery district, it is a scene hard to reconcile with the bleak and scattered images coming out of Iran these past few weeks. The link between art and politics may be well established, but what of art openings?
Inside the museum, beautiful people mill about, circling the drawings, paintings, sculpture, sound and video installations of 56 contemporary Iranian artists, the largest exhibition of its kind ever to be shown in New York. Spread over three floors, the show is divided into five sections, each with a provocative title: In Search of the Axis of Evil, From Iran to Queeran and Everything in Between, The Culture Shop: Special Sale on Stereotypes--All Must Go!, Iran Recycled: From Vintage to Vogue, and Where in the World: City Quiz.
It's a lot to process at once.
Sam Bardaouil, the show's curator, was looking for under 15 artists when he approached Leila Heller, longtime Madison Avenue gallery owner and godmother to Iranian artists trying to make it in New York. "Basically, I gave him the number of, like, 100 artists and four galleries in Tehran and Europe," Heller says on the phone the next day. The show quickly ballooned. "The more he researched, the more he realized how much great art there is out there," she says.
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