Statement:

Ida Badal, Azadeh Elmizadeh, and Aryana Minai are artists female artists of Iranian descent.  When Palyzeh Kashi first eyed Ida Badal’s work in person, she stopped in her tracks to take in her paintings; they seamlessly blur the line between aerial photographs and microscopic views of nature. The canvases are meditative and sparse yet compact with movement.  After learning that Badal and Palyzeh Kashi shared similar heritage, Palyzeh Kashi started to associate her images with clips of Kiarostami films.  Badal’s familiar scenery reminded her of the meandering desolate landscapes that serve as backdrops to Iranian Cinema.///

Over the past year, Azadeh Elmizadeh’s soft atmospheric compositions have captivated Palyzeh Kashi attention.  Her masterful overlays of translucent colors build across canvases to formulate entirely new scapes.  The weightless shape-shifting masses of vital hues reveal recognizable elements, the neck and wings of a bird, human limbs, eyes, fire, and air.  There are references to Persian mythology, but the works are experiential rather than narrative.  These mystical scenes imbue the viewer with comfort and wisdom. 

Aryana Minai mines her surroundings for bricks and stones from buildings that no longer exist, old gates discarded from their ledges, and generations old woodblocks no longer in use.  These fragments are molded and imprinted into paper pulp that is embedded with ink and dye.  Minai uses this handmade process as a rebirth for these relics.  The elemental pulp parts build on one another to create an architecture of their own.  Minai’s final compositions re-envision gates and portals as living entities that shed and acquire memories as bodies pass through its doorways.

Palyzeh Kashi