Artist
Maryam Taghavi

© Maryam Taghavi, Variations on Absurdity, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

Iran / Canada
www.maryamtaghavidotcom.wordpress.com

Born and raised in Iran, Maryam Taghavi is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist. She received her BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Her work includes drawing, photography, site-specific installation, and performance. Her practice is spread across social and spatial paradigms (the artist has been traveling between Iran and Canada since her graduation), and investigates the enigmatic relations between then and now, self and other, fiction and non-fiction. Examining the corporeal and psychological exchanges between architecture, domestic objects and the human body, she creates different scenarios for contemplation and forms of reception. She has participated in a number of exhibitions in Canada, Mexico and Iran.

“Fascinated by fleeting realms in social and spatial paradigms, my practice investigates enigmatic realtions between then and now, self and other, and fiction and non-fiction. I examine corporeal and psychological exchange in relation to architectural sites, domestic objects and human body to create a different scenario for contemplation and forms of reception.”

Performance
.sight.specific. curated by Francisco-Fernando Granados

ARTISTS
Basil AlZeri
Cressida Kocienski
Golboo Amani
Maryam Taghavi

.sight.specific. proposes performance art as the staging of sight as site: observation as contour, terrain, and architecture for modes of aesthetic embodiment. The project consists of four commissioned live works in search of situated perspectives on the possibilities of performance as a contextual spatial practice. The works situate artists and audiences by trading knowledge on the streets, tracing trans-planetary sight lines, creating home and hospitality in real time through cyberspace, and staging variations on absurdity. The shapes of these relationships brings into focus questions of knowledge and memory, contact and distance, longing and belonging.

.site.specific is co-presented with Xpace Cultural Centre

PROGRAM & EVENTS

Performance: The School of Bartered Knowledge by Golboo Amani
Fridays and Saturdays in March 2013 @ 2:00pm–6:00pm

Performance: Planetaria by Cressida Kocienski
March 8, 2013 @ 8:00pm

Performance: T.M.K.L Presents: beit Suad by Basil AlZeri
March 15, 2013 @ 8:00pm
Co-presented by FUSE Magazine and Israeli Apartheid Week Toronto

Workshop: T.M.K.L Presents: beit Suad by Basil AlZeri
March 16 & 17, 2013 @ 1:00pm

Performance: Variations on Absurdity by Maryam Taghavi
March 22, 2013 @ 8:00pm

Exhibition opening: .sight.specific. residue/ephemera
March 28, 2013 @ 7:00pm

Panel Discussion: Viewing .sight.specific.
With Basil AlZeri, Golboo Amani, Cressida Kocienski, Maryam Taghavi, and moderators Johanna Householder and Francisco-Fernando Granados
March 30, 2013 @ 2:00pm

Performance Yellow

This fragrance opens us to the question, has the show started? It's winter, the theatre is colder than the street and the room is filled with people and all their winter smells: wet faux leather, down, too much shampoo, and beer breath. The atmosphere is a trickster. Am I late, am I early?

Top Notes

yellow mandarin, mimosa

Middle Notes

honey, chamomile, salt

Base Notes

narcissus, guaiac wood, piss, beer