BABAK KAZEMI

Dates of residency: January till February 2018
Born: 1983
Nationality: Iranian
Lives and works: Tehran, Iran
Education: 
BA Graphic Design,  Ahvaz Islamic Azad University
Selected shows
2020  Amnesia & Hypermnesia, Silkroad Art Gallery, Tehran
2019 Zeuzera Pyrina, Silkroad Art Gallery, Tehran
2019 Iran,1979-2019, Maupetit cote Gallery, Marseille
2017 A Report for D’Arcy, 43 ABcontemporary  Gallery, Zurich

THE ARTIST
Babak Kazemi is a self-taught photographer. He explores the history of the province of Khuzestan in which he grew up, focusing on the impact of oil production on the region. Issues dealing with oil production and subsequent conflicts. His work is provocative addressing social issues through its irony.  He often uses sepia light in his work representative of crude oil. He also intervenes on the photo by burning them, ironing them and scratching them to convey the scars of his country. In 2012, he was awarded the Magic of Persia Contemporary Art Prize (MOP CAP) at the Delfina Foundation in London. His work has been featured in collections at the Maraya Art Centre (UAE), The Museum of Contemporary Arts (Tehran), The Museum of War (Tehran), and in the private collection of the Sheikh of Sharjah in the UAE. 

 
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PARGOL E. NALOO

Dates of residency: January till February 2018
Born: 1987
nationality: Iranian
Lives and works: Tehran, Iran
Education: 
2012 Painting, Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna
Selected shows
2020 Retouch , Pirsook Art Gallery, Shiraz
2020 Amnesia & Hypermnesia, Silkroad Art Gallery, Tehran
2019 Zeuzera Pyrina, Silkroad Art Gallery, Tehran
2019 Between Word and Image, Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur

THE ARTIST
Pargol E. Naloo has been a painter since her youth and started photography during high school when she got her first mechanical camera, a Minolta X700. Shortly after, she learned how to take  photos and develop them herself in dark rooms. With the rise of digital cameras, her practice became more photography based. In her recent work, E. Naloo combines her skills in both photography and painting focusing on hand prints in her studio work.

THE RESIDENCY
The core of Babak and Pargol’s practice is deeply embedded with political themes from the region, shaping the concept and methodology of their work. As collectors of found material, they have gathered archives from the local markets to investigate a time when Lebanon was considered ‘the bride of the middle east’. By chance they discovered the negatives of an unknown wedding album from the 1960s in the ‘Sunday market’ of Beirut. The artists chose to develop the negatives into large-scale images, on which they then used crude oil as a medium and as intervention on the photographs.