Stitched

Artist: Farhad Ahrarnia

Date: 13 August to 6 September 2008

Venue: Leighton House Museum

Talk by the artist 13 August, 3pm

Stitched is the first solo exhibition in the UK by Farhad Ahrarnia, an Iranian artist based in Britain. It includes new and recent works in a range of media including photography, embroidery and video.

Ahrarnia works with images of celebrities, Iranian royalty (including Empress Farah Diba) and recent British and international current affairs (such as the Bradford Riots suspects or American soldiers in Baghdad), which he takes from print and online media. He digitally prints the images onto cotton Aida, stretches this onto canvas and painstakingly embroiders the surface with colourful silk. Each image is testimony to the many different aspects of contemporary Middle Eastern experience.

The relationship between the surface and what may lie beneath informs Ahrarnia’s technique. By embroidering the grid-like surface of the cotton Aida, he undermines the autonomy of his chosen subjects, interrupting their sense of completeness and permanence. The act of pulling thread through the fabric is a literal and metaphorical attempt to pull hidden meanings from beneath the surface of the images.

Ultimately Ahrarnia’s stitches are an act of rebellion, since he uses the needle and thread to stitch only as he pleases, rather than following any defined pattern that the surface of the image offers.

The exhibition also includes the video work Mr Singer, Ahrarnia’s response to a character created by best-selling Iranian author Simin Daneshvar in Savushun, the first novel by a woman to be published in Iran. Daneshvar’s “Mr Zinger” was a salesman who sold Singer sewing machines to affluent Iranian families in the 1940s while collecting information on the people and areas he visited for his real work as a spy. Ahrarnia’s work plays with the physicality of the iconic Singer sewing machine.

Stiched is one of four exhibitions in the 'Here We Are' series of exhibitions curated by Rose Issa, independent curator and specialist in visual arts from the Middle East and North Africa.

Geometry of Hope: 18 June to 12 July 2008
Land on Fire: 16 July to 4 August 2008
Stitched:  13 August to 6 September 2008
Dakka Marakesh:  10 September to 5 October 2008