My Very Favourite Things

The Lodge is pleased to present My Very Favourite Things curated by Narges Hamzianpour. Please

join us for the exhibition from 22nd April 2021 - 22nd May 2021.

Narges Hamzianpour is an Iranian - American art market expert and consultant with a focus on the art

of the Middle East. Currently residing in Los Angeles, she has worked with multiple internationally

galleries and art fairs. Hamzianpour has established and cultivated collections for a large roster of

emerging, mid-career and renowned Middle Eastern and Iranian artists in museums, galleries and

numerous private collectors.

For the last year many of us have been quite stationary and confined to our homes. The home or the

spaces we reside in are a substitute vessel for the soul. The architecture protects and nourishes us, the

interior objects distinguish and identify us. We signal our interior selves in their furnishings. The mis

en scene - Hamzianpour's curation creates an intimate environment within the gallery. The works of

these 21 artists from multiple artistic disciplines invite the viewer to stay and perhaps explore in an

unorthodox fashion.

My Very Favourite Things includes Iranian and Iranian-American artists - Afsoon, Armin Amirian,

Naser Azizi, Kamran Diba, Hossein Edalatkhan, Renee Fox, Amir Habibadiu, Alborz Kazemi, Hamed

Khosravi, Farshido Larimian, Negin Mahzoun, Ardeshir Mohasses, Mani Mazinani & Sanaz

Mazinani, Nazanin Parviz, Reza Rostampisheh, Bahar Sabzevari , Semco Salehi, Kamran Sharif,

Javid Tafazoli, Rojin Shafiei & Tooraj Khamenh Zadeh Some of these artists live in exile from their homeland. There is a long history of Persian artists assimilating religious and intellectual icons and symbols in order to critique oppressive regimes. A secret visual language is created seductively revealing itself in My Very Favourite Things.

“Covid pandemic has deprived us of this immediate means of access to the world, or at least forces us

to envisage it in new ways. The glamour of travel across the globe, the cosmopolitan sociability and

consumption, in their many forms, of the world's great metropolises have given way to an urgent need

to rethink intimate space, both in terms of its physical character, and the human relations it comprises.

Cultural and social diversity is becoming a rare resource, leading us to question its place in our lives: on the one hand, its great richness, and on the other, the new frontiers it imposes on us.

Under lockdown, a new temporality is emerging, in which objects around us sometimes play a

primordial role, forming at times a harmonious symphony, at others a deafening racket that blows the

whistle on solitude. Drawing together in one place works and pathways from diverse worlds, the

exhibition 'My Very Favorite Things' invites us to think about ways of arranging our personal space,

By 'locking diversity down' within a domestic setting, cut off from the wide world's vast spaces, it

questions our notions of cosmopolitanism, with the moral obligation it carries of trying to understand

the 'other', but also the tendency it implies to 'collect' things and relationships.”

- Amin Moghadam, Human geographer - Ryerson University