Of Saints and Spices: Inside Pantea Karimi’s World of Saffron I Fall 2023 I Content Magazine I Solo Exhibition I Article

 by Justin Ebrahemi

 

 

‘Pantea Karimi’s childhood experiences in Iran inspired the artist’s holy multimedia exhibition on the saffron crocus and spice. ’

Pantea Karimi’s upbringing in Iran was colored by a world of scriptures and saints.

After school, Karimi’s mother took her to an herbal extracts shop. Picture a traditional pub, yet instead of the aroma of beer, the perfume of natural botanicals would emanate through the room.

In Saffron, Saint of Spices, iconic Islamic symbolism is supplanted with multimedia interpretations of the crocus flower as a celebration (and at times a protest) of Iranian life.

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KQED, Arts & Culture I Dec 19, 2022

by Justin Ebrahemi

 

 

 

‘The struggle continues’

For many women who grew up in Iran, subservience was inculcated at an early age. “Learning was intertwined with religious indoctrination,” says Pantea Karimi, a San Jose visual artist who left Iran in early 2001 after experiencing harassment on multiple occasions from the morality police. “I was subjected to this systematic brainwashing to make me a religious female product.”

Now, Karimi draws from her experiences in post-revolutionary Iran to create work that simultaneously celebrates and protests Iranian life. One symbol reappears: the Kaaba (or “cube” in Arabic), the most sacred Islamic site.

Like Nouri, Karimi moved quickly to address the protests in her own work, which erupted while she was preparing a solo exhibition for Oakland’s Mercury 20 Gallery. “The upheaval and flashbacks took me to a very dark, emotional place,” Karimi says, and she felt compelled to reinvent her show.

For her exhibition, Karimi marked the opening and closing by staging a performance around Naked Cube, a sculpture made with donated hair. The piece is dedicated to Iranian women and girls, including Karimi’s cousin, who was beaten by the morality police just a few months ago.

“The piece is symbolic of simultaneous bravery and mourning,” explains Karimi. “None of the hair I presented in the piece was truly free — they were pinned to the broken glass, because the struggle continues.”

Karimi says the response from her friends and family in Iran was overwhelmingly positive, and Naked Cube has allowed her to finally express the hardship she endured as a child and young adult. She hopes to reprise the exhibition to keep advocating on behalf of the uprising, saying, “The struggle of Iranian women to gain their agency cannot die.”

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Iranian American Women Put Protests at the Center of New Work: 

“The Struggle Continues”

By Justin Ebrahemi

For many women who grew up in Iran, subservience was inculcated at an early age. “Learning was intertwined with religious indoctrination,” says Pantea Karimi, a San Jose visual artist who left Iran in early 2001 after experiencing harassment on multiple occasions from the morality police. “I was subjected to this systematic brainwashing to make me a religious female product.”

Now, Karimi draws from her experiences in post-revolutionary Iran to create work that simultaneously celebrates and protests Iranian life. One symbol reappears: the Kaaba (or “cube” in Arabic), the most sacred Islamic site.

Like Nouri, Karimi moved quickly to address the protests in her own work, which erupted while she was preparing a solo exhibition for Oakland’s Mercury 20 Gallery. “The upheaval and flashbacks took me to a very dark, emotional place,” Karimi says, and she felt compelled to reinvent her show.

Karimi began filming women who cut their hair in solidarity with the Women, Life, Freedom movement. Twenty (mostly non-Iranian) women in her Bay Area and San Diego art communities participated in the project, garnering over two million views on her Instagram account.

“Some of the women, cutting their hair, had tears in their eyes, and their hands were shaking,” Karimi recalls. “It’s a meaningful gesture, when a woman cuts her hair in solidarity.”

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Chester Beatty, Art & Education Video Series, Dublin, Ireland, March-August 2022

Deconstructing Architecture  in Persian Painting | March 2022

Meeting in Isfahan: Vision and Exchange in Safavid Iran Exhibition Feb-2022-Aug 2022

“In this activity with artist Pantea Karimi, we will examine an Isfahan manuscript scene Iskandar marries Roshanak and learn how to use the process of economy to create an abstracted version of the painting. Economy helps the artist to simplify a painting by keeping the essential details and emphasising the important elements. Start by simplifying architectural shapes.”

A Family Celebration| March 2022

Meeting in Isfahan: Vision and Exchange in Safavid Iran Exhibition Feb-2022-Aug 2022

“inspired by the Isfahan manuscript painting Iskandar marries Roshanak design a celebration scene set in your own family home and surroundings. Using the collage technique, create a colourful snapshot of your home. Adorn each room to celebrate what brings your family together on occasions like birthdays, family reunions or any other festive occasion.”

SF Weekly | Sept 28, 2020

Black & White 

Rediscover Visual Arts at These Reopened Galleries

By Jonathan Curiel

Pantea Karimi’s exhibit at Oakland’s Mercury 20 Gallery, “The Unbearable Lightness of Mathematics,” is a reconstruction of her school life in Iran during the late 1980s, when she struggled with the pressures of science education and struggled with the school administration’s attempts to root out her growing, teenage interest in the music of Madonna and Michael Jackson. A clash was inevitable, and Karimi, who now lives in San Jose, tells visitors how it ended through a sequence of 10 mock blackboards with mathematical formulas that gradually get more cloudy — with the final board almost completely shrouded in a chalky fog.

 

Iran’s 1979 revolution ushered in strict religious standards, so the Persian wording for “In the Name of God” shouts from each of the 10 blackboards. The first blackboard features a copy of Isaac Newton’s mathematical handwriting alongside Karimi’s Persian handwriting, which she uses to express her concerns about studying math and taking exams. Halfway through the 10 blackboards, two clouded photos of Iran’s religious leaders oversee the blackboards and a trove of Karimi’s personal objects from that time, such as Reebok sneakers and cassette tapes of U.S. pop stars.

 

The blackboards’ interplay of cloudy chalk, Persian lettering, and math formulas — and their sequential morphing from clearly visible to almost nothingness — is a kind of visual existentialism. This aspect of the work is underscored by the dark boards’ setting: a cavernous, white-walled space.

 

More than a decade ago, Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel and accompanying film, Persepolis, made the world smile and cringe at her former life in Iran, including her student life. “The Unbearable Lightness of Mathematics” produces a similar effect — only this time, we’re asked to physically stand in a place that mirrors what Karimi felt three decades ago. The mirror gets fuzzy in places. But even hazy images produce meanings that are crystal clear.

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500 Women Scientists | May 8, 2020

STEAM POWER: Art and STEM as a vehicle for change

Articles By Francesca Bernardi, Alison Marklein & Anila Yadavalli

The combination of science, technology, engineering, art, and math — it fills the imagination, brings ideas to life, and makes us feel. Ask most scientists and they will tell you about their passion for research, the inspiration and excitement of discovery. Science and art are two sides of the same coin, and art can harness the power of emotion to elicit curiosity, discovery, and connection to science. Artists regularly tap into science to bring important societal issues like climate change to light and scientists integrate the creative process and art into their work. Collaborations among scientists and artists can reach new audiences, bring forth new ideas, and change the way we think about both science and art. Here are some of the amazing projects that have been inspiring us with their love for science, technology, engineering, art, and math.

San Jose Museum of Quilts + Textiles:
The San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles recently held a solo exhibition called The Forgotten Women of Science by the Iranian-American artist Pantea Karimi. The exhibition featured women scientists from the second to nineteenth century and highlighted their contributions to science. The collection drew on the artistic and scientific talents of these women and included installations of embroidered hoops with laboratory notebook drawings, vials of medieval medicinal recipes, and panels with the accomplishments of several women scientists in both text and image. On February 23, 2020, the museum and the County of Santa Clara Office of Women’s Policy co-presented a panel discussion, Women Scientists: Vision & Visibility, with the artist (Pantea Karimi), a science historian (Cassy Christianson), and a scientist (Dr. Suzanne Pierre), who discussed parallels between historical and current status of women in science. Even today, the loudest voices are rarely representative of the scientific community or the broader communities science serves and women continue to be underrepresented. Exhibits like The Forgotten Women of Science at The San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles are using creativity to amplify marginalized voices and pushing for science to be truly representative.

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The Mercury News  |  Jan 19, 2020

Euphrat exhibit honors ‘Women Pathmakers’

By Ann Gelhaus

Textile Talks title page

Large-scale digital illustrations on fabric by Pantea Karimi depicting both early computer scientist Lovelace and Hypatia of Alexandria, a Hellenistic Neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer and mathematician who was murdered by Christian detractors. Karimi’s series “The Forgotten Women of Science” is on view at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles through March 1, 2020. “These women did not just assume marginalized roles in the male-dominated fields of science,” Karimi said in a statement. “They were also pioneers and generators of cutting-edge ideas.”

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The British Library  |  July 25, 2019

Library astronomy manuscripts in new visual forms

Solo exhibition Countdown: Biruni-Galileo-Apollo by Pantea Karimi

Published by the British Library Asian and African studies blog, 2019

The Iranian-American artist Pantea Karimi’s recent solo exhibition Countdown: Biruni-Galileo-Apollo at the Mercury 20 Gallery in Oakland, California, USA, was inspired by a study of several of the British Library’s scientific manuscripts which she reviewed during an extended visit in 2018. In this guest blog she speaks about this process and her work. 

 

Two ancient manuscripts in the British Library drew my special attention and formed the foundation for my exhibition: the 17th century Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo’s De Mundi SphĂŠra Tractatus Autographus cum Figuris (Add MS 22786) and the 11th century Persian astronomer Biruni’s Kitāb al-tafhÄ«m li-awā’īl áčŁinā‘at al-tanjÄ«m (Or. 8349). My multimedia works in the exhibition explore an ancient and enduring fascination with the moon in science, culture and language, while simultaneously celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Lunar Mission.

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The Daily Californian  |  June 2019

At Mercury 20 Gallery, boxes, moons and bits of nature

By Skylar De Paul

 

 

The Bay Area is a hot spot for some of the best art California has to offer, and Oakland, in particular, is peppered with local galleries that showcase the works of artists from all around the globe. One of such spaces is the artist-run Mercury 20 Gallery, which rotates its featured collections every six weeks. It opened its newest collection of exhibitions last month, featuring works ranging from astronomy-inspired graphics to distressing commentary on FedEx shipments.

 

Artist Pantea Karimi’s section of the gallery, titled “Countdown: Biruni-Galileo-Apollo,” is focused on the Moon. “I aim to use the Moon as the catalyst to bring poetry, art, and science together,” she writes in her exhibition description. In her art, the Iranian American artist shares her knowledge of astronomy through mixed media art pieces. Karimi includes passages from Persian poets in some of her work, as these writings were her introduction to astronomy when she was growing up in Iran.

 

Karimi pulled information and inspiration from the manuscripts of early scientists, such as 11th-century Persian astronomer Abƫ Rayងān Muងammad ibn Aងmad Al-Bīrƫnī and 17th-century Italian scientist Galileo Galilei. Karimi first attained access to these manuscripts during her time studying at the British Library in London last year, during which she researched both astronomers.

 

“I was enchanted by this sense of imagination these scientists had,” Pantea said, standing next to her creations in the gallery she oversaw for the day. She channels this imagination throughout her works, some of which also feature scenes printed in the graphic collage on fabric from the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969. Pantea said she hopes her art will “bring a thread between the East and the West” through exploring scientific interpretation. “You cannot say science belongs to this culture or that culture. 
 Science belongs to humanity,” she said.

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Content Magazine | June 2019

Article by Nathan Zanon; Photo by Daniel Garcia

Iranian American visual artist Pantea Karimi began formally studying art at age 14 and never looked back. With the encouragement of her parents, she earned an MFA in graphic design from the Art University in Tehran before opening up her own studio there. In 2001, she moved to England to study printmaking while showcasing many of her own works in galleries and collections around the world. She continued her studies at San Jose State starting in 2005 with a second master’s degree in painting and printmaking. Drawn from an early age to her mother’s fashion magazines-not only for the clothing styles, but for the layout and design elements-some of Karimi’s recent work has brought this thread back into focus as she has studied various forms of print media from a design lens. Today, she is a sought-after speaker at museums and universities; she also teaches at the College of San Mateo and maintains a studio in Palo Alto.

 

“As an artist, I am naturally driven by my deep feelings and childhood experiences that have shaped my perceptions of the world. My work has been an exploration into the pages of medieval Persian, Arab, and early modern European scientific manuscripts. The scientific books from these periods offer nuanced understandings of the relationship between form and text, and above all, between scientific concepts and their manifestations in visual forms. I also draw inspirations from artists from around the world, my peers, and art genres. I am always thankful to the art communities that embraced me and contributed to my growth as an artist.”

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ISO Magazine, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts | May 2019

Healing Garden, A Virtual Reality Project by Pantea Karimi

FEATURED ARTIST, Pages 36-41

BY Katie Mcgowan & Nina Dietz

Healing Garden is a virtual reality project that I envisioned in 2017 after the medicinal botanical gardens of the Alhambra Palace in Andalusia, Spain. Andalusia was the birthplace of  the Herbal, which is one of the most remarkable manuscripts of medicinal botany in the middle ages. The book was composed by the 12th c. Andalusian physician and scholar al-Ghafiqi and was copied and read by many healers and physicians throughout the following centuries.
 
Wearing VR headset, participants “enter” the Healing Garden, which is a courtyard with white arches, and ten plant beds around a water fountain on a floor that is covered with Moorish tiles. They use their own hands to pick a series of medicinal plants and arrange them in the plant beds. Thus, they create a virtual garden as a metaphor for reconnecting with nature for healing. The plants are modeled after my screen-printed images on paper, which were inspired by al-Ghafiqi’s illustrations in The Herbal. Water and fountains were integral parts of medieval Islamic gardens and palaces of Andalusia. The sound of water fountains and the moving reflections of buildings, trees and flowers on its rippling surface contributed to a unique, calming experience for the residents. Similarly, in my VR Healing Garden, participants have the opportunity to listen to the sound of water fountain. The participant can then “walk” on the glowing Moorish tiles under the sun and pass through the Moorish arcades and enjoy her/his handcrafted garden from a short distance.

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SF/ARTS | April 2019

1979 Iranian Upheaval Resonates in “Once at Present”

Galleries at Minnesota Street Project showcase artwork inspired by the political and cultural changes in Iran since the 1979 Revolution

By Sura Wood

Twenty Bay Area visual artists of Iranian descent mark the 40th anniversary of the Iranian revolution in a contemporary art exhibition opening in multiple galleries at the Minnesota Street Project. “Once at Present” examines issues of migration, memory, history, the intersection of past and present and the cultural and personal implications of the Iranian diaspora.
 
“What people will see are similar experiences explored from very different perspectives,” says Taraneh Hemami, a local artist and educator raised in Tehran who co-curated the exhibition with renowned Bay Area curator Kevin B. Chen. “The work holds a lot of power because it comes from such a deeply personal place.”
 
In her work, Pantea Karimi addresses the emotional scars of the Iranian revolution both metaphorically and poetically. To create “Folding Gardens, A Stained Memory” (2017-19), she digitally printed black and white floral patterns, based on a 12th-century medicinal botanical manuscript, on long strips of transparent organza that hang on rods suspended from the ceiling. The installation, a maze of sheer curtains, gestures toward the healing properties of herbal medicine, a tradition reaching back to the Middle Ages that played an important role in her childhood in the southern city of Shiraz. “My idyllic life was interrupted by social upheaval that culminated in a decade of war and instability,” she recalls. Injured during the evacuation of her elementary school, she still remembers the blood stains on the classroom floor. Additional fabric strips depicting red tulips, an Iranian symbol of martyrdom, suggest the lasting effects of violence, and how the revolution left an indelible mark on her early life.

The Daily Californian  |  Jan 21, 2019

Mercury 20 Gallery’s ‘Self-Portraits in the Age of Selfies’ expands the scope of self-portraiture

By Camryn Bell

Artist Pantea Karimi created one of the exhibit’s most arresting pieces, offset in the gallery space by two small walls. Featuring digital archival prints of flowers arranged in circular fashion around a centerpiece, Karimi composed the piece as a reflection of the herbal medicine tradition in her hometown of Shiraz, Iran, as well as of her work researching medieval and scientific manuscripts. In this enclosed space, the piece takes up a sizable portion of the wall — yet another refraction of how the self-portrait can go beyond a physical representation and assume a more conceptual form.

 

“Self-Portraits in the Age of Selfies” is a comprehensive view of what self-portraiture can be, with a wide variety of pieces and perspectives on how we look at ourselves. Rather than indulgent or narcissistic, as selfies are so often seen, this exhibit is a celebration of self-interpretation and the many forms in which one’s self can be viewed.

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The California Printmaker  |  March 26, 2018

The Journal of The California Society of Printmakers:

Marriage of Technology and Tradition

The Versatile Screen-print: High-Tech Tools & Traditional Forms
By Pantea Karimi, pages 30-33

Screen-printing in its essence is a marriage of technology (machines and equipment) and tradition (developing imagery through multiple graphic techniques and printing on paper), which makes the medium versatile and suitable for both crisp images and painterly effects. In recent years screen-printers also have used digital applications, which help add further complexities and possibilities to the production process. I am a screen-printer with an interest in using the screen-printing process as a base for creating both multi-media and mixed-media artworks. As an artist, I find the screen-printing medium has inherent qualities that motivate me and stimulate a particular creative thought-process.

 

In 2014, I began a new research project which revisits my earlier investigations in the history of Iranian print media. My work since 2014 has been an exploration into the pages of medieval and early modern scientific manuscripts, particularly Persian, Arab and European. I am intrigued by the complex expressions of medieval and early modern scientists through scientific illustrations and diagrams. This research project further compelled me to utilize different materials, experiment with novel ways of displaying my work and employ new technologies. 

 

I have been using art installations, screen-prints on paper and other substrates, Virtual Reality and video projections to create a dynamic visual interpretation of the scientific concepts and ideas presented in the manuscripts. My research into the visual representations of medieval and early modern mathematics, medicinal botany, anatomy, optics and cartography is ongoing.

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Squarecylinder |  March 18, 2018

Printmaking rarely aspires to monumentality. Its history, with a few notable exceptions, is largely one of intimate works made either by dedicated printmakers or by painters seeking to expand their purview with help from master printers. Printstallations, a show featuring the work of eight such masters, upends that tradition by filling half the San Jose ICA with large-scale prints. They dominate entire walls, hang from the ceiling and activate floor space using a wide range of media and techniques, including photography, lithography, textiles, woodblock prints, computer-aided design, LED lights and much else. The exhibition is but the latest example of the ICA sidestepping staid white-cube displays in favor of more active modes of audience engagement. While size is a critical component, the strength of the show rests more with innovative processes than with expositions of sheer scale.

 

Pantea Karimi, a native of Iran, imprints floral patterns culled from a 12th century herbal medicine text onto translucent silk banners that hang from the ceiling. Her efforts, titled Folding Gardens, bring to mind those of another 19th century German photographer, Karl Blossfeldt. His precise shots of plants, achieved with a camera capable of magnifying subjects by up to 30 times their original size, revealed structural patterns never before seen.

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The Mercury News | Nov 17, 2017

Euphrat Museum’s fall exhibit explores kindness and hope

by Khalida Sarwari

Euphrat Museum of Art’s fall exhibit, titled “Kindness as Resistance,” features artwork by Bay Area-based artists that explore positive counter-narratives as a response to injustice or oppression. Pantea Karimi, a San Jose-based artist who teaches at Gavilan College and Cabrillo College, has several pieces in the exhibit, many of which were inspired by her childhood in Shiraz, Iran. Her works collectively attempt to engage four of the five senses: touch, sight, hearing and smell. Her most visible piece is called “Folding Gardens,” an installation of digital prints on silk organza, rods and threads that hang from the ceiling. The work is based on “The Herbal of al‑Ghafiqi,” a manuscript written by 12th century Andalusian physician and scholar Abu Ja’far al-Ghafiqi. “The idea is that someone can take these fabric strips in a folded manner and open them on demand,” Karimi said. “To me, it’s very poetic. It’s a metaphor for carrying the healing notion of nature. That’s why they’re printed on fabric so they can be folded.”

 

In this space, Karimi has the sound of a water fountain emanating from speakers. Alongside “Folding Gardens” is another piece that’s titled “Medicinal Herbal Volvelle,” an interactive wheel installation that reveals the healing properties of eight plants. And right next to that is a shelf that contains plant extracts—another interactive piece that invites visitors to open the bottles and take a whiff, a Shiraz-inspired piece of art, Karimi said.

 

Karimi developed these works this year as part of a six-month fellowship residency she completed at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley. Her aim, she said, was to encourage people to engage with these concepts through the senses rather than just read about them online or in a book. “My main idea is basically that I would like to encourage people to get connected to the natural world,” she said. “The importance of connectivity with the natural world is the main idea behind this botanical work and also to highlight the ancient practices. I feel like in contemporary times, we are not connected to the healing aspect of nature. We are connected to the beauty of it and preserving it, but how about the healing aspect of it? So I wanted to highlight that through my work.”

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SouthCoast Today | Dec 15, 2016

University Gallery exhibit keeps spotlight on heartbreaking refugee crisis.

Stateless, group exhibition, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

By Don Wilkinson

These are tumultuous times and there is an endless barrage of disturbing images that remind us how much misery and pain is in the world. One such haunting image surfaced in late 2015, when the world became aware of the photograph of a three year old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi. He wore a bright red T-shirt and he was face-down on the beach, like a discarded toy. He drowned in the Mediterranean Sea as his family fled crisis in the Middle East. That toddler could have been anyone’s son. But instead he became a symbol of something gone very wrong.

 

In an alcove, Pantea Karimi (sister of the curator) displays “Waters of Life, Waters of Death” in which a video projection of lapping waves on a tranquil beach is projected over black silhouettes derived from ancient maps of the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea and elsewhere. The sound that accompanies the video is soothing. But it would be a tragic mistake to get lulled.