GOLNAR ADILI (b. 1976, Iranian-American)
Golnar Adili is a multidisciplinary Iranian-American artist presently living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Born in Virginia, Adili moved to Iran with her parents, both Iranian political activists, at the age of four. Adili returned to the U.S. in 1994 to reunite with her father, whom had been forced to flee Iran. This experience of separation and displacement influences many of Adili’s works. Adili’s inspiration is largely autobiographical and key to her understanding of underlying identity and the world.
“I have experienced separation and uprooting in its different manifestations. In my practice I distort, and amplify these past events through material deconstruction and reconstruction. I am very interested in exploring the language of the material I use and blurring the lines between design, craft and fine art.”
In 1998 Adili received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting from the University of Virginia and in 2006 she received a Master's degree in Architecture from University of Michigan. In 2009 she won a Fellowship in Printmaking/Drawing/Artists Books from New York Foundation for the Arts. Adili has been awarded residencies at Women's Studio Workshop (2015), The MacDowell Colony (2007, 2013), the Rockefeller Foundation at the Bellagio Center, and the Lower East Side Printshop (2014), amongst others. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the L.A. Craft and Folk Art Museum and Tiger Strikes Asteroid, NYC. Adili is currently shortlisted for the Jameel Prize to exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Adili was also the recipient of a Polluck- Krasner award In 2013.
Pink Letter, 2015
23 Enlarged transfer prints of the letter on Yatsuo pink paper in a plexiglass box
24” x 18” x 2”
Courtesy of the artist
“I recreated a letter between my parents on the edge of 352 folds. The resulting moray effect requires the reader to move around the piece to read the text. This process reflects my relationship to the letter; a desire to gain distance from the emotional content while simultaneously wanting to read the text in order to uncover the past.”
“As an Iranian American growing up in post-1979 Tehran, I have experienced separation and uprooting in its different manifestations. In my practice I distort, and amplify these past events through material deconstruction and reconstruction. I am very interested in exploring the language of the material I use and blurring the lines between design, craft and fine art.”
Dust of Sorrow (Ghobar e Gham), 2019
“Gobar e Gham is composed of two words - Dust and Sorrow, from the "Saman Bouyan" poem by Hafez, the 14’th Century Persian poet. My mothers eyes from her passport photo are enlarged and photo lithographed to then be laser cut over perforating the mentioned words. This work is meant to reference the hardship and separation our family endured during political upheaval in the early years of the Iran's revolution.”
— Golnar Adili
