Statement:

Avish Khebrehzadeh’s expressively drawn works in Moon Trees reflect on the poetics of return from travel across great physical distances, journeys that few have experienced. The referent is historical: Moon Trees were produced from a set of tree seeds (some-hundreds) sent aboard the 1971 Apollo 14 mission to the moon.///

Upon their arrival back on earth, the seeds were planted in the United States and around the world and survive over fifty years later in the form of mature trees. The rarity of such a voyage requires imagination to comprehend.

Among the estimated three trillion trees in the world, Moon Trees derive from a unique set of conditions, although they look no different from other trees. In this regard, the reference is also personal: Moon Trees allude to Khebrehzadeh’s own particular journey, as an artist emigrée, who made her way from her native Iran to Italy, and eventually to the United States via London. Upon her return to Italy on the occasion of this exhibition, Khebrehzadeh’s Moon Trees bear witness to her own path that took root in Rome, a place where her art flourished: in 2003, Khebrehzadeh won the Venice Biennale Lion D’or for the best Young Italian Artist.

Khebrehzadeh’s drawn and sewn work - dreamlike trees in shades of blue and pink, gestural pairs of laboring hands threaded together with color and line, and a red-beaked bird - all support evidence of companion species who have survived migrations, and thrived to live in a shared home called earth.