Bahareh Khoshooee

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Artist Biography: 

Bahareh Khoshooee was born in Tehran, Iran, in the year of the goat, 1991. Khoshooee will be mounting three solo exhibitions in early 2019 at Elijah Wheat Showroom (New York), Tikhonova Wintner Gallery (New York), and Coco Hunday (Tampa). She recently presented her solo installations at NADA MIAMI 2018, Orlando Museum of Art (Orlando), Elsewhere (New York), and a two-person show with Aruni Dharmakirthi at Housing (New York). Khoshooee has been included in group exhibitions at C24 Gallery (New York), Museum of Photography (Stokholm), 2018 Taiwan Annual, Fajr International Film Festival 2018 (Tehran), and Untitled Art Fair 2017 (Miami). Khoshooee served as an artist-in-residence at Skowhegan School of Art and Painting 2018, Triangle 2018, Ox-Bow 2017, and ACRE Residency 2016.

She has been featured in The Huffington Post, The Guardian, HyperAllergic, Artnet News, ArtNews, Vice, The Metro, and The Creators Project.

Statement:

I investigate the fluidity of identity (or as Marx would put it: Gattungswesen) in relation to society. Immigration was an epiphany for me; my comprehension of the essence of identity has drastically transformed and evolved to a new form. The amalgam of a self-assured liberal woman and a perplexed new-come immigrant led my artistic practice to a new level; one’s socio-economic class could drastically change from one environment to another, one country to another, and thus would the notion of identity.

My practice explores the concept of self and other, technology and its imperfection, diaspora culture and fragmentation. Confabulation (fabricating memories unintentionally) has become a means of resistance, to fill the gaps of identity, to hold the fragments of self together. I question the difference between confabulators and gas-lighters, false memory and alternative facts. Because of the nature of my subject matter, I am unable to show my work in my home country. There is always a cultural/religious transgression in my pieces (due to my use of footage of unveiled women -mostly myself, personal home movies, etc.). This creates a dislocation in my work on a foundational level. I use my body as a tool and my performance as a process in creating visual imaginary liminal spaces and self-estranged characters. Body as the physical representation of human’s conscious being, mostly fails to truly represent ‘who we are’ and yet it is the only physical output of us, it is attached to ‘us.’ Using my body, I invoke the viewer to exist in a conflicted state; at once immersed in my perspective and at the same time aware of the farce; the experience of being the other and being the first person, back and forth.

Artist Website: http://baharehkhoshooee.com/