Why is it that all that blue refuses to be contained? It refuses to be shaped, measured, and revealed in all its dimensions. It is the panorama that we see from the Earth, the dome that we cannot reach, a ‘bowl’ flipped on top of our existence, yet occupying no space. By studying the Moon and the stars and by connecting our moods to the way it smiles or cries, we are still trying to make sense of the sky that surrounds us. Despite the insurmountable distance between the Earth and the sky and its defiance to be understood, these artists search to make it accessible and deeply familiar. We know that only something as magnificent, shapeless, and borderless as the sky can hold the sum of all our heart’s grief and hopes without ever pouring over.
The Sky is higher here was born out of a collective search to dissolve the unseen boundaries between what is free of the physical and what is not. It is an attempt to mirror what we find in the sky and what it reveals in us. It is only ironic that we need to weave a thread between physical objects that manifest it and what it means to us. Through a variety of mediums such as painting, photography, textiles, mixed media, and more, each artist examines the vastness of the sky and finds refuge in this great space without borders. This collection explores time, location, displacement, memory, grief, hope, and identity.///
The sky is higher here
The sky is not blue in all places
There are mountains,
There are trees
There are no mountains,
There are trees
Yet the sky is higher here
The shadows follow me
The outlines around the objects
My imagination of the perception of the objects
A single sugar cube dissolved in the ocean
Tied to a familiar object in a suitcase
I have placed my hand on driftwood of memories
From the zenith to the nadir, from the abyss of the ocean to the apex of the sky
Towards which haven in this endless ocean?
“Here my heart is full of yearning and wistfulness
And every instrument whose sound I hear is inharmonious
Let’s pack our travel satchels
And head towards an endless journey
To see whether the sky is the same color in other places
Leila Seyedzadeh
Curator: Leila Seyedzadeh
Artists
