Azadeh Ramezani Tabrizi | "Free Range": Electric Room 22/50

Dastan, in collaboration with New Media Society (Tehran, Iran), is pleased to announce “Free Range”, an installation and video presentation by Azadeh Ramezani Tabrizi at Electric Room. The show will be open to public view from January 12 to January 17, 2018.
Amirali Ghassemi (New Media Society) writes: “Free Range” is a presentation of an ongoing project by Azadeh Ramezani Tabrizi, an Istanbul-based Iranian artist. In fact, this is her first solo exhibition in Iran. Ramezani decided to do this project in a small coastal town known as Selçuk, in the west of Turkey, to be able to follow the process of the project and the local talks/rumors around it. Headless birds that were present in her drawings on paper and paintings can now be seen in the form of an installation, including three-dimensional works and videos. In her balcony that has a view to the street, she put a headless chicken, exaggerated in size, which was the subject of concern for neighbors, passersby and even the agents of the municipality for a while —soon, everyone had heard about her “free range” chicken. Curious to see the outcome, she took this piece, which is familiar and defamiliarized at the same time, to the public space: the Mediterranean coast, a teahouse filled with local old men, a bench in a park, or busy streets. The smaller-scale models of these chickens, like ‘Free Range’ acquirable gifts, rest on the grass.
On the origins of her idea, Azadeh Ramezani Tabrizi writes: The term “Free Range Chicken” is a label put on many packaged chicken and egg products. It refers to chickens that before being slaughtered for consumption, were able to move around freely in farms and laid eggs in a less industrialized environment. The eggs of such chickens are known as Free Range Eggs. Such a term with its high moral connotations, becomes ironical when two chicken legs are put in a package labelled “Free Range Chicken”.