SB15 tour: Bait Al Serkal
Photos and information of artworks at Bait Al Serkal. SB15, 7 February - 11 June 2023. Curator: Hoor Al Qasimi, based on a concept by Okwui Enwezor.
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Garden of Desire. 2023
Galvanised steel, various plants, knotted yarn, soil, water, wick, handmade cotton paper embedded with seeds, archival documents on Xerox, vellum, cotton paper and etching on paper
Credits: Dieu Donné Papermil, New York (handmade paper); Maryam Farzaneh and Sharjah Agriculture and Parks department (Landscape Consultants)
Produced by Sharjah Art Foundation
Bahar Behbahani’s research-based practice interweaves archival materials, cartography, horticultural history and contemporary context to critique imperial structures of knowledge and power. Garden of Desire (2023) is a sculptural installation inspired by the design of the royal Fin Garden, one of the oldest extant gardens in Iran. The artist’s miniature Persian garden reflects on the site’s various paradoxes of beauty, hospitality and its auxiliary purpose for diplomatic and imperialistic negotiations. The project draws upon the writings of Donald Wilber, a Persian architecture scholar later revealed to be the CIA operative behind the 1953 coup to overthrow the democratically elected Iranian government. An accompanying set of six etchings mediates the artist’s archival research to reclaim the heavily redact narratives in the historical construction of the Iranian landscape.
(Text at the exhibition. © Sharjah Art Foundation)
© Photos: Haupt & Binder, Universes in Universe
Photos and information of artworks at Bait Al Serkal. SB15, 7 February - 11 June 2023. Curator: Hoor Al Qasimi, based on a concept by Okwui Enwezor.