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Iranian contemporary art platform ADVOCARTSY opens its new gallery space, located at 434 North La Cienega Boulevard on the edge of the West Hollywood Design District. with “TRANSFORMATION,” an exhibition of mixed media constructions based in photography and collage by artist Shadi Yousefian will inaugurate the new location. This is Shadi Yousefian’s second solo exhibition with ADVOCARTSY. Her first solo exhibition launched and inaugurated ADVOCARTSY’s downtown Los Angeles gallery in 2017.
This exhibition surveys a diverse array of Yousefian’s new works from ongoing series that directly confront cultural identity and the immigrant experience. Expanding upon her previous work, these never-before-exhibited pieces draw on reservoirs of personal experience to explore the fluid, often abstract, concept of collective consciousness and universal identity.
All are welcome to attend the opening reception for TRANSFORMATION at ADVOCARTSY’s new West Hollywood gallery space on Saturday, June 19th from 4-8 pm and/or Sunday, June 20th from 1-5 pm. Both the artist and ADVOCARTSY founder and director, Roshi Rahnama, will be present. Limited capacity protocols will be observed. No appointment will be necessary.
About Shadi Yousefian
Shadi Yousefian was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1978 and moved to the United States when she was sixteen. At a time when she lacked English language skills, she was drawn to art as a means to express her longing, her vision, and her experiences.
She received both her Bachelor’s (2003) and Master’s (2006) of Fine Arts in photography from San Francisco State University. Her training in the medium has given her a unique perspective on ways to employ and explore photography within larger sculptural and installation pieces, methods that have become integral to her practice.
In 2017, ADVOCARTSY presented Yousefian’s first solo exhibition in tandem with the launch of our resident Downtown Los Angeles gallery. The works exhibited in 2017 relay the identity crisis Yousefian experienced after moving to the United States. Self-portraits haphazardly stitched together from film negatives speak of her frustration with two identities to which she felt no clear sense of belonging. While chaotic, flowing grids of disintegrated letters tell the story of a young woman struggling to stay connected with her home country while attempting to integrate into a new one.
Now, five years later, Yousefian’s jarring compositions have evolved to become harmonious forms that seek to combine elements of the artist’s born and adopted cultures rather than highlight the dichotomy between them. Building on the momentum of her previous work, Yousefian continues to systematically destroy personal artifacts such as photos, letters, film negatives, and manuscripts to capture and distill the essence of her own lived experiences. The process of carefully composing these fragments into minimalist grids reveals Yousefian’s desire to better understand her origin as well as preserve her history and culture, but also to discover the person she is now. This collective of the past is a construction of identity in the present.
All of Shadi Yousefian’s work to date strives to describe her life as an immigrant and tap into a more universal experience. Fragmentation of the whole reverberates throughout each series, revealing intimate revelations about the world and her place in it. These fragments unify in an endeavor to reinvent the self in a new social and cultural context. In her hands, the lines between destruction and creation become unclear. Through themes of metamorphosis and memory, “TRANSFORMATION” defines what it means to be human through all of our contradictions and imperfections.
“TRANSFORMATION”
Public Exhibition Dates: June 19th – July 17th
Public Opening Weekend: Saturday, June 19th, 4-8 pm and Sunday, June 20th, 1-5 pm
Closing reception on Saturday , July 17th – TBA
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11-5pm or by appointment.
About ADVOCARTSY
ADVOCARTSY is a collaborative visual arts platform specializing in Iranian contemporary art based in Los Angeles.
THE SPACE by ADVOCARTSY, ADVOCARTSY’s downtown Los Angeles gallery, was launched in October 2017 as the permanent Los Angeles gallery space of ADVOCARTSY to further its mission of promoting Iranian Contemporary Art and as an extension of ADVOCARTSY’s “ART BRIEF” series, launched in Los Angeles in 2015.
In 2021, ADVOCARTSY expanded its exhibition spaces to West Hollywood to better expand the platform’s outreach and programming and to better serve the community and our roster of artists.
Its original 1,800-square-foot-space is ideally situated in the heart of Downtown LA’s Fashion District, minutes from the rapidly expanding arts district and LA’s newest museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Its new 1,600-square foot-space is located on the edge of the West Hollywood Design District, near the Pacific Design Center and minutes from the Mid-Wilshire Museum row, including Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Craft Contemporary Museum.
Female artist
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