Andisheh Avini | "Everyone Together": +2 [Deh-Vanak]

+2 presents "Everyone Together" , an exhibition of new work by Andisheh Avini, opening on Friday,

February 13. This is the artist’s second exhibition in Tehran.

At the center of the exhibition are three vertical spine forms, rendered in traditional Iranian

marquetry (Khātam-Kāri) and strategically installed to cast long, shifting shadows across the gallery.

Acting as both structure and metaphor, the spine supports the body, connecting mind to movement

while evoking resilience and hope as part of a fundamentally human core. Across distance,

circumstance, and political conditions, the spines and the intricate marquetry adorning their

respective surfaces become a figure for something enduring and inescapable within the human

form. The spines are further entwined with glass organs, which cast a luminous glow alongside the

spines’ shadows. Like Avini’s spines, these organs have a meaning beyond anatomical function,

serving as sites for the expression of love and endurance and thereby underscoring the beauty of

such vulnerability and resilience in delicate concert.

Flanking the spines are sixteen marquetry masks installed along the length of the gallery, arranged

with deliberate density and restraint. Their placement produces a sense of compression and

vigilance, heightening the emotional resonance of the exhibition space. Here, masks expound on the

fundamental questions of identity raised by the spines, nodding en masse to the condition of the

diaspora: watching, waiting, and bearing witness from afar while acting as mechanisms of

concealment. Facing inwards toward the spines, they embody a collective gaze to an anatomical and

emotive core.

Materiality plays a crucial role throughout the exhibition. Avini’s masterful use of marquetry weaves

history and craft into a portrayal of internalized humanity, while glass evokes notions of fragility and

exposure. In combination, these elements reflect the tightrope many Iranians walk: a simultaneous

love for, identification with, and estrangement from, a country that remains deeply formative.

Ultimately, regardless of an outward emotive state, these core elements of identity, the beauty and

vulnerability they evoke, and the various manners of their outward expression, remain fundamental

and inescapable.

Installed with careful precision, "Everyone Together" unfolds as a meditation on identity not as a

political position, but as an internal structure—one that persists through melancholy, anger, love,

and resilience, with a gaze directed toward a deeply human core