Farnoush Amini MRSS

Statement

My work has been influenced by my memories from Iran and my experience of the suppression caused by the Islamic Government which came to power after the revolution, eight years of war with Iraq and women's lack of freedom. I extensively research these subjects through documentary footage, articles, and pictures. The battle and tension created between our beliefs and secret doubts have formed the main concept of my practice. I look beyond boundaries created by cultural, religious and political suppression in order to create my own language of temporality in my Installation and performance art practice. By imbedding cultural or religious symbols in my work I try to communicate a hidden message to the viewer and to overwhelm them with a sense of entrapment by taking them to the edge of their tolerance facing implied violence or death. There is a presence of an action in my work, something is about to happen or has just happened. This could create the anxiety of the unknown in the audience, something I have been carrying with me most of my life, perhaps as a result of spending my child and young adulthood years in a fear of the air raids or being warned or arrested by the moral police. My material language encompasses human hair, fabric, metal, clay, ice, feather and ready-made objects, and using these I create tensions and relationships between organic and non-organic matter. The use of minimal materiality and transformation in my work is complex in its simplicity. A simple knot or the noose can change the whole perception of that object. The existence of life and death in the organic material is what I am drawn to. In terms of influences, Doris Salcedo and Parvize Tanavoli have inspired me the most through the way they use material charged with significance and full of meaning to address political issues. Like Salcedo, I transform the familiar object into something unfamiliar, but unlike hers my work is not about remembrance and mourning it is about the injustice of what is happening right now. There is a presence of an absent in Salcedo's work, but in mine there is a presence of a present. Tanavoli’s Bronze sculptures on the other hand are a direct approach of using words or symbols in a philosophical way.

Bio

Farnoush was born in Iran and now lives and works in London. She graduated from the Art Academy London in July 2019. Her work has been influenced by her lived experience  of Iran’s revolution, suppression, Iraq’s invasion war and women’s rights. She aims to  question the division created by politics, religion and cultural differences and its effect.  Exploring material language, their connection or disconnection and their relativity to her  chosen concept is her focus. She extensively researches these subjects in their wider aspects  through documentary footage, articles or photos. 

She somehow extracts the most relevant material, symbol or gesture from her chosen subject which she has been deeply affected by in order to communicate a hidden message to  the viewer. 

Her practice consists of installation and performance art in which she explores material  such as: human hair, fabric, feather, metal, clay, concrete, ice, tarmac and ready-made  objects. By placing the familiar object in an unfamiliar form or space she overwhelms the  viewer with a sense of entrapment or on edge. 

In 2017 & 2018 she was selected to exhibit at the Espacio gallery in London. She was also commissioned by Springfield Psychiatric University Hospital in London in 2018. Some of her art works have been bought by a London based art collector.

 She won the “People’s Choice Award” by Passion For Freedom in 2018. She is the twice winner of “Sheros Revoluciones Prize” by Lon-Art Creatives in 2019 & 2020. 

In 2020 she had her first solo exhibition by Nouvelle Vague Art Space in Cadiz, Spain.

She was invited to exhibit at the U-Jazdowsky Museum of Contemporary Arts in Warsaw, Poland in 2021-2022 at the “Political Art” exhibition.

In 2023 she was part of the exhibition called ON The Edge by a group of Royal Society of Sculptors at Espacio gallery in London.  

She is selected to exhibit at the Thirsk Hall Sculpture Farm in 2023-2024.