pressed like a breath collapsing into a sigh
March 18th - May 15th, 2022
With artists: Farnaz Khosh-Sirat, and Hope Wang
Recording of the virtual artist talk here
pressed like a breath collapsing into a sigh presents a collection of work by Chicago-based artists Farnaz Khosh-Sirat and Hope Wang, who look to their built environments as spatial productions of memory, power, and desire. Drawing on constructed nostalgia to navigate the dissonance between loss and belonging, both artists employ architectural patterns to evoke intimate realities of place.
By referencing hyper-specific architectural imagery and reconfiguring fragments of it, Khosh-Sirat and Wang produce “false” copies and traces of everyday life. These palimpsests take postures of longing that are not just decorative, but also serve primary functions as coded languages of their own. Khosh-Sirat utilises girih, geometric patterns in Persian textiles and architecture, in her atmospheric sculptural installations. In an act devoted to mimicry that also reflects a desire for material to appear as something other than itself, Wang reproduces patterns from common construction materials into playful new forms. While Khosh-Sirat captures the stylized patterns of prayer rugs and meditates on the spiritual essence of space, Wang contends with the sloppy traces of human activity around industrial sites. By manipulating material to create ghostings of such contexts, Khosh-Sirat and Wang celebrate the essential qualities of their built environment that is simultaneously casual and critical.
Both artists share a wonder for human presence within space, as well as how people record and recall memories. Khosh-Sirat and Wang maintain that these edifices are not legible as something solid, but as layers of a malleable, porous body. One that reflects, transmits, and absorbs the desires of those who exist within it.
Hope Wang is a Chicago-based artist and arts facilitator. She hosts and operates LMRM, a floor loom rental studio for Chicago fiber artists. Wang is also a co-organizer of Chicago Textile Week 2019 and 2021, Chicago's first textile exposition featuring a week-long program of events highlighting work spanning interiors, architecture, fine arts, and fashion. She received her BFA (2018) from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a 2021 recipient of the gener8tor Art Accelerator Program Grant. She has attended the Digital Weaving Lab Residency at Praxis Fiber Workshop (Cleveland, OH); The Weaving Mill WARP Residency (Chicago, IL); and Spudnik Press Cooperative Fellowship (Chicago, IL).
Farnaz Khosh-Sirat (b. 1995, Kuwait City, Kuwait) is an Iranian light artist & designer based in Chicago, IL, who
works mainly in video as well as sculpture. Strong influences of traditional pattern works from Iran is predominate in
her work as well as light and nature. Khosh-Sirat has received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
in 2017.
