An art installation by Iranian-American artist Afruz Amighi is currently on view at Dubai’s Leila Heller Gallery.
Amighi has titled her exhibition with the Swedish word ‘Mangata’, a word that has no direct English translation. “Instead, it is a description of the glimmering, road-like reflection that the moon creates on water,” reports the gallery’s website, Leilahellergallery.com.
The description of the title is an invitation to consider how reflection and light create key experiences within the exhibited work.
The artworks are innovative objects in shape of mosques, abodes or shelters, which look brilliant together with their shadows, when they get touched by light.
In an earlier collection, Amighi, 42, used woven polyethylene, a material used in the fabrication of tents in refugee camps, to create patterns that, upon illumination, made ‘a wall of shadows’.
The work dealt with the issues of displacement following conflicts and wars. “As a result I decided to create something artistic and embed the concept of solace and shelter in it.”
Amighi’s sculptural practice has undergone a significant change through utilization of 3D techniques and her new skills in welding and use of common material such as chains, steel and mesh. This new technique allows her a certain conceptual freedom whereby she can weld any size and shape together with her own hands.
As she explains, “For me these structures are nearly all abodes. Whether they reference cathedrals or mosques, tombs or shrines, they are places of refuge, solace. They are idealized homes I build for myself to live in for a time, and then walk away from.”
Amighi uses her structures to investigate the ways in which society has used architecture to come together throughout time and space and to produce manifestations of her imagination.
The exhibit will receive visitors through June 15 at the gallery.
