CAPITAL

Arash Hanaei 2008 – 2015

List of works:

Installation views

Capital Complex, MINI/Goethe-Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38, New York

2016

Unedited History, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (Museum of Modern Art) Paris

2014

Unedited History, MAXXI Museum, Rome

2014

A selection of digital drawings from the series Capital

2008 - 2015

Including:"A Notebook for every Iranian", "Digital", "For sale"

2009

Billboards with following titles:

Up from left to right: Rasan skin cream (Born Again),

Iranian movie poster Vertigo, Black and Decker

Down from left to right: Mulinex forever (immortal),

Imen antivirus (how easy it is to kill), Beem home appliances

2009 - 2010

“Behesht Zahrâ”, anynmous martyrs' section”

2013

“Behesht Zahrâ”

2008

Untitled

2009

“There is no friend and no protection more comforting than to ask for advice", "Imam Ali

(Aleyheh-salam)

"I killed the Egyptian pharaoh" , * Khaled Islamboli ( Egyptian officer condemned to death for his

part in assassination of Anwar El Sadat in 1981; considered a martyr; sentence repeated in Arabic) 2009

“There is no friend and no protection more comforting than to ask for advice", "Imam Ali

(Aleyheh-salam)

"I killed the Egyptian pharaoh" , * Khaled Islamboli ( Egyptian officer condemned to death for his

part in assassination of Anwar El Sadat in 1981; considered a martyr; sentence repeated in Arabic) 2009

“Imam Khomeiny(R H[Rahmat Allah Aleyh]) : Prisoners of war in the hands of their enemies are songs of freedom and free spirits whisper these songs". 2009 Bazar 2009 “Tabi’at Bridge literally (Nature Bridge)”, 2015 Billboard, “Pass the ball compatriot” 2015 Billboard, “Zwilling Germany” 2015

Capital Complex

MINI/Goethe-Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38

April 24 – June 05, 2016

Arash Hanaei has been portraying the city of Tehran since 2008. His digital drawing series entitled Capital

dissects its shifting pattern of streets and their inherent contradictions. Based upon his own documentary

photographs, the artist interprets the capital city’s constant transformation and the chaotic

superimposition of dissonant layers with formal austerity. Primarily black-and-white or greyish-green, the

drawings reduce the original amount of information on the photographic image to a minimum and direct

the viewer’s attention to the cultural and geopolitical underpinnings inscribed in the urban landscape.

Among other works, Capital Complex presents Hanaei’s history of advertising in Tehran’s public space

narrated in two series, one featuring billboards and another one murals with war heroes and martyrs.

After the Iranian Revolution and during the Iran-Iraq war, propaganda images took the place of

advertisements for foreign products. Ever since the latter began making their way back into the cityscape,

they have coexisted with the other, political images and texts, often displaying slogans with similar

language. Hanaei’s visual alphabet of the dynamics of past and present in Tehran recounts a local history

within its global context.

In Hanaei’s first solo exhibition in the United States, Tehran’s urban architecture merges with the display

walls at MINI/Goethe-Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38. The visual works are presented alongside

a new audio piece in which the artist reflects on a future project devoted to the capital city of Paris. By

Nina Tabassomi

Capital

2009, Tehran, Iran

Currently Selected is a part of the article written by Homayoon Askari Sirizi

...The revelation of truth is only made possible through the negation of its outward reality but there are

times when this trick, applied to depict contradictions, all the more shows the similarities marking the

climax of his work.

In photos where a squirming crowd of people is shown, only the outlines distinguish people from objects.

It is as if, indifferent to the representation of their multiplicity and individual identity, the photos reduce

figures to lines depicting a neutral and homogenous mass. And to this mass every image and text on the

walls of the city is a call, one that is sometimes encouraged by moral advices and political slogans and

other times by heavy advertisement.

The juxtaposition of these texts and images, as depicted by Hanaei, gives an extraordinary view of the

ideological organization of the city.

One of his photos, for instance, shows Khaled Eslamboli’s picture in a street bearing the same name, thus

promoting and venerating martyrdom and the killing of Taghoot [the evil anti-Islamic forces] while

another photo, an advertisement, speaks of ‘the easiness of killing’ in such a strange phrase that erases all

the shame and obscenity attached to the verb.

Other graffiti in a different part of the city refer to the eternal life of martyrs while a famous brand alludes

to the notion of rebirth, youthfulness and eternal beauty in advertising its products. The interesting fact is

that the ad itself does not last more than one or two weeks and will soon be replaced by another with

similar promises. What remains unchangeable, however, is the city’s call to rebirth, youthfulness and

eternity.

From a different viewpoint, the overlapping of these pictures and texts, also reveal the essence of the city

as a palimpsest*. While the city can be seen as a palimpsest when one considers its physical structure

being built and rebuilt over and over again.

It is his reading of it that shows its labyrinthine quality influenced by the overlapping and superimposition

of political, economical and social texts. It goes without saying that one can hardly find traces of the

previous political text on the “capital” city fabric.

Today, Capital is a new writing on city’s texture, so bold and clear that it has effaced the slightest traces of

older texts. His approach in selecting this narrative word amounts to the return of the idea of Capital to

the physics and outlook of the city.

* Palimpsests were stone or metal tablets used for writing and rewriting in Ancient Greece before the

invention of paper. In the works of Derrida, palimpsest is a metaphor of a text made difficult or impossible

to understand due to the signs and traces remaining from previous texts written on it. From a different

viewpoint, palimpsest can also be considered a metaphor for intertextuality and the interrelation of texts

causing the apparently independent words and phrases to be woven together in a new texture creating a

labyrinth of meaning.

Capital Complex, MINI/Goethe-Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38, New York

2016

Unedited History, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (Museum of Modern Art) Paris

2014

Unedited History, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (Museum of Modern Art) Paris

2014

Unedited History, MAXXI Museum, Rome

2014

Unedited History, MAXXI Museum, Rome

2014

"A Notebook for every Iranian", "Digital", "For sale"

2009

Billboards with following titles:

Up from left to right: Rasan skin cream (Born Again),

Iranian movie poster Vertigo, Black and Decker

Down from left to right: Mulinex forever (immortal),

Imen antivirus (how easy it is to kill), Beem home appliances

2009 - 2010

“Behesht Zahrâ”, anynmous martyrs' section”

2013

“Behesht Zahrâ”

2008

Untitled

2009

“There is no friend and no protection more comforting than to ask for advice", "Imam Ali

(Aleyheh-salam)

"I killed the Egyptian pharaoh" , * Khaled Islamboli ( Egyptian officer condemned to death for his part in

assassination of Anwar El Sadat in 1981; considered a martyr; sentence repeated in Arabic)

2009

Imam Khomeiny(R H[Rahmat Allah Aleyh]) : "Prisoners of war in the hands of their enemies are songs of freedom and free spirits whisper these songs". 2009

Bazar 2009

“Tabi’at Bridge literally (Nature Bridge)”, 2015

Landscape, North of Tehran from 2009

Billboard, “Pass the ball compatriot” 2015

Billboard, “Zwilling Germany” 2015