YADASHTS

Uncommon Terrain explores place from an abstract perspective. Each of the works included is anchored in a physical material or in a collective history that is transcended by personal perception, intuition, and embodied experience. The page, the canvas, or the gallery itself stands in for the landscape of the mind. The works are the tangible manifestations of a journey of discovery to understanding the self through contact with the other. Using painting, drawing, sculpture and photography, these five artists reveal something about themselves as well as the viewing audience-the places we have been, the people we have met, and the terrain we have traversed both physically and mentally.

Synopsis: “Death of the Persian Prince is a powerful new play by Dewey Moss (The Crusade of Connor Stephens, A Normal Life, All the Way from Arp, TX) that sheds light on the growing practice of gay Iranians being pressured or forced into sex changes in order to avoid legal execution. While sex change operations are legal in Iran, homosexuality is punishable by death.”

Listen up: new Omid Walizadeh mix for KCRW! So good.

Check out the first episode of “Bailout,” a new web series by talented Iranian-American filmmaker Sara Zia Ebrahimi Hughes. Learn more about it and catch Episode 2 at http://www.bailoutwebseries.com/, then help support the series at Kickstarter by May 29!

Cover of Iranian illustrator and political cartoonist Mana Neyestani's new graphic novel, "An Iranian Metamorphosis." Read the first chapter and more about the book at VICE.

Leila Heller Gallery, NYC - Curated by Dr. Shiva Balaghi

Read more here. 

Excerpt from Xerxes Speaks, a new graphic novel from Ramin Abhari about, well, you know who. Read more about it here. 

This rich, tangy Iranian chicken stew from Azita Houshiar is a highlight of the Persian holiday Shab-e Yalda, a winter-solstice tradition that predates Islam by thousands of years The chicken is drenched in pomegranate molasses and cooked with a copious amount of ground walnuts, which results in a gravy that is sweet, tart and thick with flavor.

See the trailer for CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YGmTdo3vuY

U.S.A.I.R.A.N obscures the perceived divide between Iranian and US identities. By reappropriating the exterior of a vacant building in D.C.’s thriving H Street corridor, artist Sanaz Mazinani creates a sculptural symbol for the transference of culture in which one’s personal politics are recontextualized and cross-examined.  The installation brings attention to the void of Washington D.C.’s official Embassy of Iran, which has stood regal yet vacant on Massachusetts Avenue NW since 1980. Mazinani wraps a quintessential mid-century American building — the site of the former Robert L. Christian Community Library — in intricate Islamic patterns. Articulating the nebulous sense of place from the perspective of an emigrant, muraled windows and walls reference the architectural details of the former Embassy. Upon close inspection, one will see that these patterns are comprised of mass media imagery, composed in both parallels and contradictions. U.S.A.I.R.A.N examines absence and placelessness, while at the same time explores the potential for harmony. It is a site from which to build mutual respect and activate cultural exchange.

More at https://www.facebook.com/events/623044717809161/ and http://creative-capital.org/projects/view/712.

Mohsen Namjoo & Ebrahim Nabavi, in dialogue (in Persian) Sept 21 3-5pm at UC Irvine's Jordan Center for Persian Studies.  

Hafez Nazeri, now based in NYC, on his #1  album "Untold" bringing classical music traditions from Iran, India, Europe to mainstream classical audiences through verses of Rumi.