MONA AGHABABAEE

Dates of residency: January till February 2019
Born: 1982
Nationality: Iranian
Lives and works: Esfahan, Iran
Education:
MA in applied art, Art University of Tehranyear
BA in applied art, Art University of Tehran
Selected shows/screenings:
2019  Study in Surface, O Gallery, Tehran
2018  Romance and Revolution, ACC gallery, Weimar
2017 The Seventh Tehran National Sculpture Biennial, Contemporary Art Museum of Tehran
2016 The fifth Urban Sculpture Biennial of Tehran, Khial Gallery, Tehran

THE ARTIST
Mona Aghababee is an interdisciplinary artist based in Esfahan, Iran. Her work is in continuous communication with the objects from the everyday world and their dialogue with the body. Aghababee’s works have been exhibited widely around the world. She received the Damon Courtney Memorial Young Sculpture Prize from Sculpture by the Sea Festival, Sydney, 2009.  She participated in National Sculpture Biennial of Tehran in 2011 and 2017 and also Urban Sculpture Biennial of Tehran, where she was awarded the first prize in the Fifth Urban Sculpture Biennial in 2016. Furthermore, she has received several full fellowships from several residencies including the Headlands Art Center (US) in 2016, ACC Studio Program (GR) in 2017, and AABKC program (DK) in 2019. She is also the co-founder and co-director of Va space for contemporary art from 2014 in Esfahan which hosts national and international artists, critics and writers to engage with the local community.

THE RESIDENCY
During her time in Beirut Aghababee continued her research approach based on Alice in Wonderland. She (me) experiences the new world as she enters a hole. An empty space, an irrational and nonsense world that starts the game. The game as a trip, the body as a cast of it. The journey that would destabilize the identity that escapes from the repressive code of the subject. Her project in Beirut was inspired by an earlier work during her time at the Headlands Residency (US), she had come across several holes and cracks on the walls, remnants which have carried hidden histories from The Cold War in a building owned by the US army. The artist documented the walls and cracks by rubbing colored powder onto the paper. She continued this process to document a city, “the city as a wonderland”.  Throughout her residency she investigated Beirut’s surreptitious and layered history.