Samira Shakeri | "Shame": Dastan's Basement

Dastan's Basement presents "Shame", a solo presentation of works by Samira Shakeri, opening Friday, October 29, 2021. "Shame" will be on view through Friday, November 5. Samira Shakeri (b. 1983, Tehran) lives and works in Tehran. Since graduating in Painting (2008) from Tehran's University of Art, she has participated in many group exhibitions inside and outside Iran. "Shame" is her first solo exhibition at Dastan's Basement.

In "Shame", Shakeri returns to more-or-less familiar images springing out the Revolution of 1979. From stamps to money, from city walls to schoolbooks, these images have formed part of the visual memory of the Iranian society. In this return to archival visual material, she comes upon a prevailing feeling – shame. This is a shame imbued with rage, coming from a sense of loss of individual or collective ideals. Shakeri sees this rage as a rebellion against the self.

In "Shame", the artist's approach to image construction is balanced on two connected but separate planes. Her drawings with pen and ink are direct, to-the-point, and straightforward. Her paintings on various media on fiber are made of multiple layers of paint with slow execution. To her, the drawings are closer to her intention while the complexity of painting on fiber offers a choice of tampering with the final image.