cube is NOT geometric, 2022

Women, Life, Freedom project

Solo Exhibition, Mercury 20 Gallery

In cube is NOT geometric, by utilizing video, animation, wall drawing, and sculpture, I investigate the cube relevant to my personal experiences in two contexts, political and religious. The distorted shadows on the wall under my perfect cubes are reminiscent of LeWitt’s Distorted Cubes.

At the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams, MA, during a month artist residency in mid-2022, I developed more in-depth narratives about my work on geometry; I saw my past works in a new light that brought broader identity-politics issues and my voice into the equation as an Iranian-American woman. I was particularly inspired by LeWitt’s Distorted Cubes as well as the eight-pointed and twelve-pointed stars which are identical to those used in historic mosques in Iran. I have been working on these patterns and tiles using research on the Topkapi scroll, a late medieval Iranian architectural document, housed at the Topkapi Palace in Türkiye. Investigating and reading more about Sol LeWitt’s Distorted Cubes, my obsession with the cube resurfaced, but I observed how different my perspective was.

I studied science at school in post-revolutionary Iran, where learning was intertwined with religious indoctrination through teaching the Arabic language and subjects on Islamic traditions and practices. The Kaaba means cube in Arabic and was one of the first extensive “geometric” objects I discovered in our religious courses. In our geometry class, the cube was also the first three-dimensional geometric shape I explored and constructed with paper. I made a few production mistakes, and my cube’s vertices didn’t exactly match, resulting in a “distorted” cube, and it was rejected by my teacher.  The cube became and has remained a challenging, complex shape to comprehend from geometric, scientific, and religious perspectives ever since. My cube consciously and conscientiously cannot be geometric.

While I was working on this exhibition, the Iranian women’s protest against compulsory hijab in mid-September 2022 transpired. I was a small child when I had to wear the mandatory hijab at school and other public places in Iran. All these years being outside Iran, I thought I had escaped the coercive force of compulsion, but the death of Mahsa Amini at age 22 while in police custody took me back to the first time I was detained, at age 21, on the street by morality police. The disturbing memory of that incident resurfaced and the flashback took me to a very dark, emotional place. As a female artist with firsthand experiences with the morality police, I was compelled to respond and extend my exhibition’s content. On October 6th, 2022, I asked a friend to donate her hair and I posted a video of her cutting her hair on Instagram, which resulted in other women in my local and broader communities expressing their desire to also participate. Consequently, I filmed more volunteer women, mainly non-Iranians, cutting their hair. Their videos with messages of support and solidarity went viral on Instagram. I had two weeks before the exhibition opening to create Naked Cube, which included the donated hair pieces.

Contorted Shadows, three handmade wood cube sculptures, each 12 x 12 x 12 inches, charcoal wall drawings (eight-point stars extracted from the Topkapi scroll), shadows, and hair, 2022.

Three cube sculptures hold charcoal drawings, two of which are the eight-point stars from the Topkapi scroll. While the cubes are perfect, their distorted, elongated shadows on the wall, in various shades, are reminiscent of LeWitt’s Distorted Cubes. The black center in Cube ii symbolically represents the Kaaba, and its net the Christian cross.

Naked Cube, hand-made wood cube sculpture (30 x 30 x 30 inches), tulle veil (10 feet),  hair, fabric, steel rods, and shattered glass

I stitched each donated piece of hair to a black cone-shaped fabric where the hair reveals itself from the narrow bottom end, as a metaphor for the struggle, freedom, and ultimately the agency over bodily autonomy that Iranian women demand. The hair pieces are installed inside an open black cube structure, referencing the Kaaba, laid on broken glass pieces, with a 10-foot-long veil hanging over them from the ceiling, exposing both Iranian women’s struggle and bravery. Naked Cube is dedicated to Iranian women, and my cousin, Sadaf, who was cornered and beaten by the morality police during a protest on October 9th in Shiraz, Iran.

Harvested Braid, a collaboration with Svetlana Gous, 14 feet, October 2022

Videos & Stop-Motion Animation

Disposable Cube, four multi-screen videos, 1:30, 2022

The four multi-screen videos with sound show me at MASS MoCA, playfully engaging with my handmade paper cube in front of Sol LeWitt’s wall paintings. Outside the museum, I circumambulate the square grids and the cube, a quiet ritual that ends unexpectedly. LeWitt’s works feature geometric shapes and eight-pointed stars, motifs commonly found in Iran’s historic religious architecture, significant for their innovative representation of complex mathematical designs. By kicking the cube, I symbolically reject the geometry and the “distorted views” imposed on me because of my birthplace, while also protesting my lived experiences as an Iranian woman in post-revolutionary Iran. The piece serves as an homage to Sol LeWitt’s Distorted Cubes and explores the intersections of cultural identity, scientific and artistic achievements, and their collision with politics and theocracy.

Two videos were taken and monitored by Patricia M. Brace at Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, June 2022
Two videos were recorded at MASS MoCA grounds by Pantea Karimi, North Adams, MA, June 2022.
Permission for filming at Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective at MASS MoCA’s mill building was granted by the Sol LeWitt Estate in 2022.

A Preludial Implosion, stop-motion animation, 31 seconds, 2022

This stop-motion animation draws on Plato’s Timaeus (c. 360 B.C.), in which each Platonic solid is associated with a classical element, with the cube representing the Earth. It presents two side-by-side stop-motion animations set in different contexts. Using my handmade paper cubes, I explore the intersections of cultural identity, history, and their collision with politics and theocracy. One cube symbolizes cultural identity and scientific endeavor, featuring a twelve-pointed star pattern derived from a late Medieval Iranian scientific document, juxtaposed with a black cube referencing Malevich’s 1915 Black Square as a “sacred icon.” In the video, the cultural cube is shot and destroyed. I created the stop-motion animation using 100 photos of the cube, captured in 1-centimeter increments from the moment it is “shot” to its destruction.

Staged Circumambulation, Video performance, Nov 19, 2022
Mercury 20 Gallery, Oakland, CA.   Performers: Martha S., Mel D., Jordan K., Tara D., Jennifer L., Victoria H., Danielle W.

Six of the videos of volunteer women cutting their hair

Volunteer women who donated their hair:
Dr. Ladan, A.  (Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art at The San Diego Museum of Art ), Dr. Persis, K. (Neda Nobari Distinguished Chair, Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies @San Francisco State University), Summer B.,   Heather W.,   Joelle B.,    Jordan K.,   Valerie B.,   Sahba S.,  Mahsa V.,   Roya P.,   Anahita B.,   Sara A.,    Fariba B.,   Arezou P.,  Hamideh G.,   Sara T.,   Junko T.,   Johanna P.,  Jennifer L.,   and    Victoria H.

The 10th-century poet Ferdowsi in Shahnameh: Book of Kings, referred to the hero Siavash’s wife cutting “her musky tresses” to grieve for and protest his death.

Allegedly the worst is behind us, 2024

Institute of Contemporary Art San Jose

Curated by Zoë Latzer

Curatorial Statement: “The exhibition features twelve contemporary artists who work to mend and amend the past in reckonings with memories, records, and archives, acting as both revisionists and storytellers. Drawing from their own family lineages and cultural backgrounds, in many cases lost or ruptured through forced relocation or removal, each artist explores what it means to be a living archive, carrying previous generations’ experience into the present. Through investigations in installation, painting, and video, they affirm the importance of art in keeping and questioning history—creating not mythic pasts but active practices for considering what stories need to be told, and, even rewritten. 

In Allegedly the worst is behind us, past knowledge and future imagination meld in the hands of living artists who show us how re-examinations of history can offer insight towards the radical changes needed for today. The exhibition prompts the questions: What does it mean to inhabit a fraught or silenced history? How do we critically analyze and reconstruct historical narratives while caring and tending to our communities? How can reflecting on the past create spaces of liberation for the future?”

Stanford University

Print on Purpose, Freedom and Justice for Iranian Women

A printmaking workshop with students in the Print on Purpose course, at Standford University’s d. School occurred on Nov 4, 2022. Karimi was invited to guide a printmaking workshop using trace monotype printmaking to create images of hair as a form of activism and as a visual approach to convey messages. The choice of subject matter, hair, was used as a deliberate and symbolic choice that carries social or cultural significance not only for Iranian women but also for many other cultures around the world. 

Inspiration and Research

Square Kufic is an Arabic script. The script was originally created with bricks and tiles in Iran, during the medieval period, functioning as pixels.
Arabic and Persian languages use similar alphabets but the languages don’t share the same origin. Below are examples of tile patterns and Square Kufic script, functioning as pixels, from the Topkapi scroll, in late medieval Iran.

Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective at the mill building at MASS MoCA in June 2022 and MASS MoCA ground. Distorted Cubes and 8-point and 12-point Stars wall drawings.

In Williams College Museum of Art’s exhibition catalog, David S. Areford writes: “The cube-which was first featured in LeWitt’s structures in 1960s- becomes an incubator for new forms, as well as the site of instability and distortion.”