Contemporary Istanbul 2022

Ava gallery is pleased to announce its participation at CI 2022 with a presentation of

works by Navid Azimi Sajadi, Elham Etemadi, Jinoos Misaghi, Roghayeh Najdi,

Pooneh Oshidari, Sanam Sayehafkan, Tarlan Tabar and Gamze Zorlu.

We aim to show different directions of emerging and mid-career artists who

explore their own discourses regarding their propensities to form and shape,

together with their attitudes in social and ontological terms.

All the artists are narratives who However, they do not follow a straight path of story

telling and avoid applying particular or familiar forms and symbols that may make it

very easy and superficial to get the meaning and story within their paintings.

Navid Azimi Sajadi (b.1982, Tehran, Iran), Azimi’s work reviews his experience in-

between two cultures. He has developed an esoteric language of signs and symbols

from multiple mythologies and histories. This untitled work is composed of a

customarily symbolic language referencing ancient Hellenic sculpture, Islamic

architecture, Zoroastrian motifs and contemporary popular culture. Typically, Azimi

makes use of both traditional materials and contemporary objects. Each individual

element is laden with meaning, coalescing to represent today’s society as Azimi

perceives it. Azimi has been the subject of solo exhibitions at a number of museums

worldwide, including Castello della zisa curated by Giuseppe Moscatello & Ashkan

Zahraei organized by Mondro Mostre (Palermo, Italy). Complesso monumentale

Santa Maria Nuova, Monreale(2020); MACRO, Roma(2018); Azimi’s work forms part

of the permanent collections of institutions that include Getty center collection,

USA; Emin Hitay Private Collection, Turkey; EMAAR Collection (Foundry), UAE;

Bilotti Museum of Contemporary Art,Italy; Cosenza Museum of Contemporary Art,

Cosenza; Morhaim Collection, Istanbul, Turkey; Cosenza Museum of Contemporary

Art, Italy; BUHL and Amin, USA;

Elham Etemadi (b.1983, Shiraz, Iran) received her doctorate in visual art at the

University of Strasbourg in 2018. She had participated in numerous solo and group

exhibitions in Europe and Asia since 2005. She has exhibited at ST'ART fair

contemporary art, Strasbourg(2017), London Art Fair, Online(2021), Volta Basel,

Basel(2021), Asia NOW, Paris(2021).she held the first prize of the "House of the

Staff" Award for the best work of the visitor and the jury, 'Children's Memories.'

Etemadi’s work form part of the permanent collections such as Hitay private

collection, Turkey; Jean Marc Decrop private collection, France and many notable 

private collections. In Etemadi's expressionist figurative paintings, she tries to create

a vast and expanded language which is not verbal but visual and is based on human

feelings and tendencies. Her works bring together her different visions and sides of

her character; as a mother, a female immigrant, a wife, and an artist she tries to

express her experiences in a visual language that can communicate with people

from different backgrounds, cultures, nationalities, and gender. Etemadi lives and

works in Lyon, France.

Jinoos Misaghi (b. 1989, Tehran, Iran) in her works courageously portrays a unique

confusion. The way she puts the image together creates concepts that stand

beyond critique, uncertainty, movement, gender, and home, in its literal sense of

the word. In her works, human figures are constantly confronted by a labyrinth

designed by the artist; A multifaceted and fragmented world that becomes an

excuse for revealing the thousand more pervasive possibilities that the artist

perceives as the painting itself. The oscillation of perspective, which is a recurring

motif of this maundering symphony, can be an explanation of the intertextual

relationship that the painter establishes with her geographical painting tradition,

which is experienced by the audience as a kind of de-authorization of the final

image. It is as if, in watching the whole work, each part of the painting becomes a

window to enter another part that this entry does not necessarily establish a

meaningful relationship with the image before and after. Like the labyrinth itself -

whose destination is unknown and never reaches its final destination. Misaghi Lives

and works in Istanbul, turkey.

Roghayeh Najdi (b.1982, Tabriz, Iran) has studied as a contemporary painter both in

Istanbul, Turkey, and Tehran, Iran. Her works have been shown in numerous

exhibitions in different places like Tehran, Istanbul, Queensland, Amsterdam, and

Antwerp.

Najdi uses color and composition to portray layers of time and relativity. Flowers are

some of the most prominent elements in her paintings alluding to hope, feminism,

and ephemerality of human life, which are the main focuses of her artworks. One of

her signature techniques is converting her subjects into negative not only to strip

them of identity but also to break all bounds with any specific time and location.

She aspires to convey the depth of human emotions and their relenting fortitude

and steadfastness by addressing current social issues regarding her home country of

Iran. Najdi lives and works in Tabriz, Iran.

Pooneh Oshidari(b.1984, Tehran, Iran) has received her BFA in Graphic Design in

2006 and her MFA in Illustration from the Tehran University of Artin 2010. Oshidari

is mostly concentrated on painting and drawing. “Time” is the essence of Oshidari’s

recent works; both in terms of the conceptualization and in the development and

presentation. Her professional career began in 2007 by participating in Iran's 7th

Painting Biennial and holding her first solo exhibition Tehran. During 12 years her

works were exhibited in 10 solo exhibitions in Tehran, US and Kuwait. She has

participated in more than 90 group exhibitions, festivals, art residencies and art

fairs. The content of her present works has roots in 2011 when she started

researches on Persian ancient culture and myths, and later, references to the nature

and environment became more prominent in her works.

Sanam Sayehafkan (b.1989, Rasht, Iran). She had participated in several group

exhibitions, such as Bavan Gallery’s booth, JingArt Art Fair, Beijing, China (2021);

Bavan Gallery’s booth, Teer Art Fair, Tehran (2020). Sayehafkan creates an

atmosphere full of illusions and dreams. It seems that the elements are placed next

to each other to convey a concept, element complements the other in an incredibly

way but the more accurate you become, you will not come to any definite meaning.

It seems the painter with amazing sharp colors and lines wants the audience to

travel deep into her artwork and let them decide the end of this journey. Sayehafkan

looks to art history and contemporary world literature to create stories with

imagined, multi-dimensional, and deceptive narratives in her work. In these timeless

painting pieces, she presents narratives of vague stories in seductive spaces to the

viewer and traps the viewer within the intertwined narratives and endless

exploration.

Tarlan Tabar (b.1984, Qazvin, Iran) has received her BFA of Painting from Tehran

University of Art. She uses a wide variety of techniques and mediums to produce

paintings and three-dimensional work, and focuses on subjects that include memory

and amnesia, life and immortality, narcissism, cannibalism and ambiguity. Her work

has been featured in several group exhibition, such as Foundry, Dubai, UAE; Bavan

Gallery’s booth; London art fair, Online(2021); Teer Art fair, Online(2020); “Inner

Fragments”, USA (2018-2020);

Tabar tries to be a story teller in her artworks, the colors of the painting and even

the name of the painting can be a new story for audiences. In her recent series she

tries to use mark board as her medium. Tabar lives and works in Tehran, Iran.

Gamze Zorlu (b. 1989, Mersin, Turkey), graduated with a BA in fine arts from the

Mimar Sinan Fine Arts Faculty in 2012. She spent the year in Spain attending

Universidad de Sevilla via Erasmus LLP. In her paintings, she discusses the tense

relationship between the city culture and the nature that we are part of but from

which we are drawn away with the civilizations that we have founded. To emphasize

the groundlessness of human-nature duality, she presents the space as a kind of

puzzle both formally and contextually in the composition and she frequently

conveys outdoor factors as if they are indoors. Thus, she intends to allow the

audience to participate in the painting from various points by creating a kind of

spatial infinity which destroys the balance of conventional composition and the

source and target of which are not clear. In this process, she acts from the concept

of ‘Strange attractors,’ which refers to being surrounded by nature in physics; Zorlu

Works and lives in Istanbul, Turkey.