sarehimani.com
Artist BioSareh Imani is an Iranian artist based in Brooklyn. She works with a wide range of media, including sculpture, installation, performance and video. Her practice dwells between her individual studio work and her collaborative projects in non gallery spaces. She has exhibited her work in group shows in United states, Italy, Sweden, Dubai and Iran.
Kindred Stitches, 2018, Three channel video installation, stereo sound, loop, Duration:00:22:23
“Kindred Stitches” is a three channel video installation in which I address the notions of parenting and gardening, aging and mortality through a poetic narrative. The first video is a recorded FaceTime conversation between me and my parents about my sick cactus, they giving me advice on how to save it and spontaneously telling stories of how they previously saved cacti in Iran. Reviving the plant acts as a metaphor for care, kinship and repair of shattered connections. The second video is of a reconstructive ear surgery performed by my father, which I documented by being present in the surgery room. In this surgery, a dismembered ear is being reconstructed with sculpting techniques using the patient’s rib cartilage. Inaccessibility of ear prosthesis in Iran as a result of sanctions, is a reason to go back to this method. The third video is the documentation of mending a sculpture in my studio, exploring my relationship to my parents through creation process. This sculpture is a cast of my mother's back which broke when I was releasing it from the mold.
Kindred Stitches, 2018, Detail: video still, Top left monitor: documentation of reconstructive ear surgery with sound, Duration: 00:05:05
Kindred Stitches, 2018, Detail: video still, Right monitor: the sick cactus with sound and English subtitles, Duration: 00:05:57
Palimpsest, 2016, video projector, media player, paper, eraser shavings, 137” x 78” x 15”
Soldiers, 2016, performance still, handmade plaster bricks
Incorporating my life experience in my work, I try to open up the possibility of a broader understanding of the interplay between individual and social forces, and how those forces configure one’s agency. Addressing geopolitical issues, my practice explores the reparative potentials of art and science, intimacy and distance, specifics and abstractions, instructions and poetics. This approach to art is influenced by my relationship to my family, especially my my father, who is a surgeon. My many conversations with him about his surgeries, and having an extensive library of medical textbooks in our house, triggered my lasting fascination with the human body. My early encounters with this kind of medical imagery prompted me to think about the human body in more expanded ways.