Parsa Mostaghim, Sepehr Hajiabadi & Sadra Mirsharifi | "Face, Visage, Look": Dastan's Basement

Dastan presents a virtual exhibition of works by Parsa Mostaghim, Sadra Mirsharifi and Sepehr Hajiabadi titled “Face, Visage, Look”. The exhibition will be available for public viewing from 22 May through 5, June 2020. This presentation includes three series of solo works: acrylic paintings on canvas by Sadra Mirsharifi, pastel and ink paintings on cardboard by Parsa Mostaghim and oil paintings on canvas by Sepehr Hajiabadi, depicting portraits of the members of the trio.

Parsa Mostaghim (b. 1998, Tehran), Sadra Mirsharifi (b. 1996, Tehran) and Sepehr Hajiabadi (b. 1992, Tehran) have been working together since 2018 through four different group exhibitions as part of “Eastern Whistle,” a collaborative project that aims to introduce a new wave of young Iranian artists. The trio joined forces on this project following their collaboration in “New Day (Eastern Whistle group exhibition)” curated by Fereydoun Ave and presented at Lajevardi Foundation in 2019.

“Face, Visage, Look” is the group effort of three new wave Iranian artists living and working in Tehran, sharing their sense of belonging to a common ideological and artistic background. Depicting portraits of each other, the artists opt for a shared subject matter and try to reach a nexus in their artistic interaction to “capture the process of artistic creation within form and a shared subject matter”, as they explain.

The virtual viewing room created for this presentation has been designed by the artists in collaboration with Alireza Hosseinipour. According to the artists, this alternative artistic platform —initially an attempt to compensate the lack of in-person experience of the artworks— offered them a chance to incorporate the pandemic-induced situation into their work. As they state, “We used this opportunity to create a highly unrealistic cyberspace for an exhibition which can be only experienced virtually”.

Dastan has previously hosted exhibitions featuring collaborations among artists in trio. Group exhibitions such as “Inwards/Out” (2014) and “3 in One” (2015) are among these efforts.