Hamzianpour & Kia is pleased to present “The New Future,” the first solo exhibition in the United States of the Paris-based artist Melika Shafahi. The exhibition will remain on view through July 30, 2022. 

Info from the gallery
At a time when the lines between real and virtual are increasingly blurred, the latter may appear to be more and more the defining structure of our social condition, but the risk is that by attaching too much importance to it, we end up trapped inside. Melika Shafahi’s exhibition of photographs, videos, and site-specific installations invites us instead to shift our gaze joyfully towards one of the noblest features of artistic creation: its ability both to grow out of encounters and places, and stimulate new ones.

The associations Melika evokes have their roots in her journey as an artist living, both in Iran and France, but also in diverse geographical locations where she developed her artistic projects. Here she brings into connection the Friche de la Belle de Mai, a former tobacco factory converted into a cultural complex in Marseille, France, where she was an artist in residence in 2018/2019, and the experience of her many trips to the island of Hengâm, in southern Iran. She interrogates her perceptions of human relationships and the ways the material environment interacts with them. Yet the strength of her work lies particularly in the way she blurs the boundaries between these diverse locations, as she devises an entirely new universe for her subjects to participate and perform in. Her images and objects, often taken out of their original context and scattered here and there, create an imaginary, timeless space that becomes a playground she invites us all to enter.

On view: July 9, 2022 – July 30, 2022

What: “The New Future,” Melika Shafahi
Where: Hamzianpour & Kia, 5225 Wilshire Blvd #212, LA, 90036
Website: https://www.hamzianpourandkia.com