Statement:

O Gallery presents “Phonemes of the City”, a solo exhibition of recent works by Neda Moradi (b. 1984).

It does not seem that the intention of creating the following images, in its common sense, is to represent the urban environment, not even to show the dimensions and geometry of a city; whatever it is, the artist uses such components as the basis of her work, so that by taking them into consideration, from her own eyes, she can create the model of her living spaces, or even get to know them; a pattern that can be called, in a few words, the way of being and living in a certain place.///

In the presentation of this pattern, with colors that are neither bright nor mute, with a coating that polishes and yet negates transparency instantly, the artist dwells on the hasty moments of an afternoon towards the end; an afternoon that is either real in our lived experience or is the state of our inner feelings, it is as if it brings grief and encouragement altogether.

On the other hand, contact with a limited geometry in the artist’s images, through the folding and unfolding of the layered papers, seems to represent a body that the city residents live in, without knowing it, outside of their personal body; and this second body of ours is the buildings, in which we live in, this building has added movement and gesture to our living environment, a light or loud sound, muffled or ear-splitting, a sound that, by any means, is connected to the other sounds in the city, sounds that are mixed up or broken apart and are “seen” every day and have become the source of our visual understanding of our living environment. So maybe in order to understand the language of the city, every house is a phoneme among other phonemes, along them, above and below them… by chance or accident, or not, because of the will that wants to gather, wants to give meaning – whatever may be, it’s as if these numerous phonemes of the city are the visible commotions of the images in this collection; commotions that create words or phrases that can be lingered upon and loved.

The warm brush of the painter, if we don’t claim shows the importance of the lifestyles of the residents of these identical phonemes/homes more vividly than the importance of their builders, it at least shows the dialectic of the motivation to live with the indifferent material of these raised bodies, which provokes the viewer to – after leaving the gallery space – take a double feeling mixed with judgment with him/her to one of these very houses.

Vahid Hakim