The Solo Show of Yasi Alipour In the Twelve Gate Arts
Yasi Alipour's solo show entitled "The Pleasure of Futile Cycles" at the Twelve Gates Arts in Philadelphia began March 29 and runs until April 23. In collaboration with the Asia Contemporary Art Forum (ACAF) in New York, Maryam Ghoreishi curated this exhibition that displayed the artist's newest work.
Yasi Alipour is a New York-based artist and writer. In 2018, she graduated from Columbia University and now teaches at Columbia and SVA. The materials used by the artist to express her political and historical concerns are paper, lines, and surfaces. Folded papers are used by Alipour to explore the mathematical world as a language, with all the historical, social, political, and moral ties that come with each language. So far, his work has been exhibited in the United States and around the world at events such as Geary Contemporary, Secca, the Venice Biennale, the Hercules Art Studio Program, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina.
The research-oriented artworks by Alipour are based on her lived-life experience as a citizen in a context of a society with unorganized policies. In one of her former series entitled "As Dreams Become History,", Alipour asked her Iranian friends who were born after the Iranian revolution to share stories that they had heard from their families and friends for years. She paired the text of these memories with paper covered in black ink. Trace left from folding the sheets, references to geometric designs from the Middle East Art.
She also uses various paper surfaces to create abstract works in this show: folding sheets and the lines left from folding the sheets after opening. Alipour also uses the cyanotype process in the works of this series. She describes folding sheets as an endless dance on paper. The repetition of these movements recalls rituals rooted in her childhood. Alipour's interest in folding is the result of her fascination with mathematics, numbers, and theories like the "Xenon Paradox". In this process, she discovers the infinite possibilities that lie in the division of a two-dimensional surface into unequal parts.
On the last day of the show, a workshop entitled "Finding Silence, Echo, And Sounds in Traces" will be held by Alipour and multimedia artist and musician, Julia Santoli. The participants are encouraged to fold papers, along with vocals and soundart, to create an interactive atmosphere.
In this exhibition, Alipour and Maryam Ghoreishi, two Iranian art experts living in New York, collaborate for the first time. Ghoreishi is an artist and independent curator who received her M.A in Visual Arts Administration from New York University. She curated an exhibition entitled "Out of Sight, Beyond Touch" in New York, recently. Ghoreishi also is a committee member for The Other Art Fair in 2022.
The organization which hosts this show, Twelve Gate Arts, was founded in 2011 as an independent, non-profit organization. "Gate" recalls the fortified walls of ancient cities such as Delhi, Lahore, and Jerusalem, and the art and culture found in the heart of the city. South Asian art and its relationship to the world of art on an international level are the main goals of this gallery, as well as paying attention to the issue of transnational identity. Twelve Gates Arts aims to exclude any form of discrimination based on race, color, religion, physical or mental disability, gender, or any other legal form of identity. The website of this gallery stated:
"Today and every day, we condemn racism in its myriad forms, and recommit ourselves to the work of documenting and SHOWCASING experience of Asian Americans, Muslim Americans, victims of Islamophobia, and all people of all colors and races through art."
