PRESS FILE 'Eight Volumes of Fantasy. Maryam Najd.

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pressfile Eight Volumes of Fantasy. Maryam Najd 02.07 > 02.10.2016 | GROENINGEMUSEUM (cabinets)

exhibition Eight Volumes of Fantasy. Maryam Najd in short Artist Maryam Najd (*1965, Teheran) received her training in her native city and in Antwerp, two cultural and artistic extremes. This duality is also evident in her painting, where both worlds are skilfully intermixed. Najd combines her own experience of reality with the observation of ‘reality’ as depicted in the media: the artist regularly works with the photographs she makes of television broadcasts. The chosen image is then removed from its context and abstracted by her artistic process - a reflection of her mastery of the ancient Persian art of miniature painting - and so becomes transformed into a poetic yet still very clear political statement. he Groeninge Museum project is a partnership with the Bruges Cultural Centre. In this instance, Najd takes as her starting-point poems

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from the famous ‘Eight Books’ by the Iranian painter and poet Sohrab Sepehri.

This allows her to explore the various contemporary positions occupied by migrants, refugees and travellers. Through the use of Sepehri’s poetry she also builds bridges to the Groeninge Museum’s permanent collection. For example, she not only links Odevaere’s painting of ‘The Death of Lord Byron’ to the figure of the poet himself, but also to the dying migrants of today, all of whom sought in their own way to find happiness and a better life on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. This exhibition is a successful follow-up to the projects by Fabienne Verdier, Ellen Harvey and Robert Devriendt, in which contemporary art enters into dialogue with the permanent collection of the Groeninge Museum in a manner that opens up new perspectives.

Eight Volumes of Fantasy Maryam Najd in het Groeningemuseum

By Michel Dewilde

From 2 July 2016 Maryam Najd (*Teheran, 1965) will exhibit her most recent series of works in the Groeninge Museum. This solo exhibition was set up in collaboration with the Culture Centre and also forms part of the artist-in-residence programme of Musea Brugge.

Maryam Najd left Iran in 1991 and continued her further artistic education in Belgium, first at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp from 1992 onwards and later at the HISK in Ghent in 1996. Since then, she has developed a fascinating oeuvre and has become one of the most interesting painters of the last decade.

Nadj has built up a layered form of visual expression, in which the worlds of figuration and abstraction are intertwined. In terms of content, she is known as a sharp observer of reality as it is depicted in social and mass media. In her paintings, Nadj includes and reworks images and photos taken from the internet, television or the printed media. She selects images that touch and move her, and places them in juxtaposition with her own identity and position as a ‘foreigner’ in Western society. In this way, Najd demonstrates, for example, her concern at the often negative depiction of women in media, the despair of migrants, their search for a safe environment, for a place where they can belong.

For her project Eight Volumes of Fantasy in the Groeninge Museum, the artist sought her inspiration in the collections of poems by the famous Iranian poet and artist Sohrab Sepehri (*Kachan 1928 - Teheran 1980). In particular, Nadj has focused on extracts from Sepehri’s most well-known work: Hasht Ketab (The Eight Books), published in 1976. The artist uses these verses to explore in greater depth one of the most important contemporary issues in Europe; namely, the recent influx of migrants and their precarious situation. At the same time, she makes connections with other works of art in the museum collection. In this text we will look briefly at a number of the aspects that underpin the exhibition.

THE EXHIBITION AS A VERSE FORM For this exhibition in the Groeninge Museum Najd has used a very tight structure, comparable to the form of a poem. She has built up the exhibition from right to left, distributing her paintings in five rooms in a manner that reflects the Sepehri collections. She has spread the eight books over four of the five rooms, using the fifth and final room as a prelude, which offers an introduction to her work and the exhibition.

When dividing up the rooms in this way, she did not necessarily choose to follow the original order of Sepehri’s collections, which allows her to make other links and connections of her own. The similarity between the structure of the exhibition and the structure of a poem is also evident in each of the individual rooms.

Each one is dominated by a monochrome work positioned on the room’s long wall. These monochrome pieces come in different forms: single canvases, diptychs or triptychs, which can be either horizontal or vertical. Nadj uses them to refer in a playful manner to other works in the museum’s permanent collection.

In this way, the artist sets the rhythm of each room using the same method: the large monochrome painting dominates the space and immerses the viewer insa gigantic wave of colour.

The role played by these monochromes is of great importance to the artist. Nadj seeks to express the thoughts and emotions present in her compositions not only through her figurative pieces and their narration, but also through the use of abstract fields of colour. Together, they form an instinctive pictorial translation of Sepehri’s visual poems. Last but not least, these abstract paintings also focus the gaze of the viewer on the figurative works that hang on the side walls. In this way, they provide a moment of rest and contemplation, as well as adding a necessary degree of structure to the overall concept.

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THE EIGHT BOOKS: A SEARCH FOR BELONGING...

The last room in the exhibition is, in fact, its beginning, since it is here that the artist links her own oeuvre with both the museum collection and the world of the poet. Nadj places her imposing oil painting Contemplation (2015) in dialogue with George Minne’s (*1866-1941) sculpture The Three Holy Women at the Grave (1896) and with Sepehri’s poems.

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At first glance, there are a number of clear similarities between the two works of art. In both instances we can see cloaked women, whose identity remains concealed from the viewer. This use of ‘the hidden’ or ‘the veiled’ is a recurring feature in Nadj’s work. The differences between the two pieces are primarily to be found in their context and content. The figures in Minne’s The Three Holy Women at the Grave have much in common with the medieval ‘pleurantes’, stylized sculptures of weeping mourners, whereas the figures in Najd’s Contemplation exude a more subdued and meditative mood. This distinction between different forms of grieving and reflection is a common theme throughout the exhibition.

In the second room, Nadj uses three works to look more deeply at Sepehri’s first book, The Death of Colour, in combination with his third book, The Burden of the Sun.(1) On the left and right walls, flanking an impressive dark monochrome piece, hang two figurative paintings. Here the artist confronts Lord Byron on his death-bed (1826) by Joseph Denis Odevaere (*1775-1830) with her own Mediterranean Blanket 1 (2016).

In this highly-charged encounter Nadj points to the lack of interest in the global media for the fate of refugees who die during their flight from their homeland. At the same time, she highlights a number of noteworthy differences

and similarities between the two paintings.

From 1823 onwards, the famous English poet Lord Byron (*1788-1824) took part in the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire. He died of disease on the shores of the Mediterranean, while engaged in the fighting around the Greek city of Missolonghi in 1824.

In his Neo-Classical style, Odevaere depicted the poet as a resistance fighter and a Greek hero, adorned with all the attributes of fame and glory, reclining on a richly decorated death-bed, bearing the emblazoned titles of his most famous poems. But whereas the poet was honoured in death as a hero, the washed up corpse of a drowned refuge in Mediterranean Blanket 1 disappears in formless anonymity and is forgotten. The body lies wrapped in a golden thermal blanket, alongside of which we can see a number of bare footprints, while in the background a pair of indifferent tourists stroll unconcernedly along the shore of the same Mediterranean Sea where Lord Byron died. In this manner, the artist highlights the paradox of two travellers, who each in their own different way and for their own different reasons went in search of a new world and a new form of liberation at this same spot.

Najd expresses her dismay at the lack of understanding for the precarious situation of the refugees and their desire to find a safe haven.

The use of the gold-coloured thermal blanket as a symbol for these refugees also occurs in the fourth room, in the painting Utopia (2016).

Here we can see the back of a refugee, who is holding a thermal blanket in the direction of the endless and empty sea. Is this a reference to the lost homeland from which he has fled or does it suggest that his search for a better world has come to a fruitless end on the Mediterranean coast?

(1) In this text, use is made of the English translation by Bahiyeh Afnan Shahid in The Eight Books, Sohrab Sepehri, Beyond Art Productions, 2012

images in HR

more info

Images may only be downloaded for promotional purposes that serve the interests of this exhibition via the following link: http://www. flickr.com/photos/museabrugge/sets/.

Arrangements/appointments can be made via sarah.bauwens@brugge.be of t +32 50 44 87 08.

Please attach the correct credits to the use of these photographs. The relevant credits can be found together with the photos on Flickr.

Press visits to the exhibition are possible with an appointment; see the section ‘press’ on www.museabrugge.be.

The press file can also be consulted online and the texts can be extracted via www. museabrugge.be, under the heading ‘press’.

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Maryam Najd | Mediterannean Blanket 1 (2016)

Maryam Najd | Utopia (2016)

Joseph Denis Odevaere (*1775-1830) | Lord Byron on his death-bed (1826)

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practical information Title Eight Volumes of Fantasy. Maryam Najd Location Groeningemuseum (cabinets), Dijver 12, 8000 Brugge Dates van 2 July to 2 October 2016 Opening Hours from Tuesday to Sunday from 9.30 to 17 h.

Tickets â‚Ź 8 (26-64 y.) | â‚Ź 6 (>65 y. & 12-25 y.) [incl. permanent collection]

free for children < 12 y. and residents of Bruges Organization Cultuurcentrum & Musea Brugge More info

www.ccbrugge.be | www.museabrugge.be

request We like to collect all the many different reviews and reports about our museums and events. May we therefore please ask you to send a copy of any article you publish or a CD of any broadcast you make to Sarah Bauwens, Head of Press and Communication Musea Brugge, Dijver 12, B- 8000 Bruges.

You can also forward files digitally (please give the ftp or url) for the attention of sarah.bauwens@brugge.be Thank you for your co-operation and your interest.

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d anken hun b ijzon dere b e gun s ti ger s

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