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
.site.specific. curated by Francisco-Fernando Granados

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

ARTISTS
Basil AlZeri
Golboo Amani
Cressida Kocienski
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 for situated perspectives on the possibilities of performance as a contextual spatial practice. The works situate artists and audience 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.

PROGRAM

Friday and Saturday in March @ 2:00pm–6:00pm
The School of Bartered Knowledge by Golboo Amani

March 8 @ 8:00pm
Planetaria by Cressida Kocienski

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

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

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

March 28 @ 7:00pm
Opening of the exhibition of sight.specific exhibition of residue/ephemera

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

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