François Ghebaly New York Gallery presents A Land to Fall Asleep, by Los Angeles-based artist Roksana Pirouzmand. The exhibition will be her debut with the gallery.
At the center of the gallery is a ceramic cast of the artist’s body. Covering the body is a line of casts made from her mother’s hands. The hands tap on the back of the sculpture every five minutes. Each tap stands for a word, a story told without language. Their sound comes from friction between the hands and the body, rubbing against, pulverizing, and changing one another with each successive blow.
The artworks on the walls are made from earthen ceramic. Figures whose faces the artist has hollowed out kneel or pile up. They’re in a place between home and unfamiliar land, at a time between the night and the day. Their grief is shared in-between time and place. Gestures blur the lines of care and violence; a shoulder is offered to rest a head, as one figure sits with their entire weight atop another. Bodies become steps, rising or sinking between a rift in the mountain. They stitch the land together.
A sculptor, ceramicist, and installation and performance artist, Pirouzmand directs her multifaceted practice toward broad links between material and the human body, emphasizing how the two might interact in memory, relationship, communication, and resilience. In her newest work, Pirouzmand turns toward the familial as she reflects on both personal and multigenerational diasporic histories through ruminative silhouettes of exile and the ties that bind.
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