Leila Pazooki | "And You and Me Again": Dastan's Basement

Dastan’s Basement is pleased to present “And You and Me Again” a solo exhibition by Leila Pazooki (b. 1977, Tehran). Running from May 30 to June 20, 2025, this exhibition marks her first collaboration with Dastan’s Basement, where she transforms the space into a playful museum of objects suspended between everydayness and transcendence. "In ""And You and Me Again"", visitors encounter an installation of ceramic pieces, brightly colored paper works, a neon sign, and an abstract lion sculpture – a geometric volume atop a table. Drawing inspiration from the Y2K visual culture (spanning 2000–2010), Leila Pazooki constructs a dreamlike environment, a “museum of contemporary everydayness”, where objects, displayed in transparent, rotating vitrines, resemble cultural artifacts. Pazooki intends to show how objects can go beyond their instrumental roles and embody deeper meanings, shaped through lived experiences and collected memories. Featuring edible sculptures, kinetic forms, and the reenactment of video games, the exhibition not only references pop culture and the digital realm but also invites reflection on the soulfulness of objects and the possibility of a non-utilitarian relationship with them. By continuously shifting the roles of subject and object, Pazooki suggests a new relationship with objects, grounded in fundamental human needs and moments of pure awareness and realization, free from the prejudices of an adult world. Her formal language and visual constructs evoke the aesthetic of games like Minecraft and Roblox. Her accessible, unfiltered visual style reinforces the idea of art as a playful yet contemplative experience. At the end of the gallery space, a neon sign reading “Recharge Here” mimics the moment of recharging and instantly feeling better found in computer games, a site for restoring energy and give a breeder of ordinary life. "And You and Me Again" is based on research conducted on our current visual culture. It documents contemporary life in the form of an abstract and conceptual art installation. It inviting the viewer to reflect on the meaning of objects and their role in shaping collective memory, within a space suspended between childhood, memory, and material representations." Leila Pazooki (b. 1977, Tehran) is an interdisciplinary artist working across video, performance, installation, photography, collage, and painting. She holds a BA in Painting from the University of Fine Arts in Tehran, a BA in New Media from the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, an MA in Sculpture from the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, and an MA in Art in Context from the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). Leila Pazooki sees her work as a critical commentary on the history of Western colonialisms. Pazooki has held numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world. Highlights include the Second Iranian Photography Biennial (Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran, 2008); See the Light (a group art exhibition in Louis Vuitton, Hong Kong, China, 2011); Untitled (Galerie Ernst Hilger, Vienna, Austria, 2011); Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki, Greece – Roaming Images, 2012); ZKM Museum, Karlsruhe, Germany (The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds After 1989, 2012); 4th Mediations Biennale (Poznań, Poland, 2014); and Museum of Western Art (Tokyo, Japan, 2016).