Fascinating Meeting of October 30

December 17, 2021

SMRN held another exciting and fascinating meeting on October 30 with members that included: Azadeh Emadi, Carol Bier, Kalpana Subramanian, Steven Baris, Juan Castrillón, Delinda Collier, Pantea Karimi, Niusha Hatefinia, Nina Czegledy, Nezih Erdoğan, Lynn Marie Kirby, Farshid Kazemi, J.R. Osborn, Mansoor Behnam, and Laura Marks.

Our members Mansoor Behnam and Pantea Karimi presented their works in progress. Mansoor shared his beautiful experimental film "Stigmata" and explained his intention of making the video. He stated that he had been experiencing the idea of how to make "goodness", how to think and try to construct "goodness" consciously, and how this concept could become part of human embodiment. The film's thought-provoking images demonstrated that the idea of "goodness" is not only a sacred or divine concept flown or descended on the human consciousness, it can also be promoted and constructed by humans through language, images, cultural output, and social production.

Our member Pantea Karimi presented her recent solo exhibition works called "Artful Attacks," exhibited in July 2021 at the Mercury Twenty Gallery in Oakland, California. Pantea is an Iranian-American multi-disciplinary artist whose works are mainly inspired by a series of important selected historic illustrated scientific manuscripts and documents in the areas of mathematics, geometry and medicinal bodily. In her work, she combines content from her research with contemporary issues and personal narratives. Her current project, "Artful Attacks," presented in our meeting, consisted of a 42 feet scroll series of political ceramic tiles and a performative video. ​The title "Artful Attacks," according to Pantea, referred to the mysterious attacks that targeted Iran's nuclear site in 2020 near the historic city of Natanz, located near a nuclear site. The works collectively represented her emotional unease about recent political tension experienced in Iran and its adverse effects on Iranian people and the threats to the historic city of Natanz and its medieval architecture as an exemplar of the Iranian culture and nation. Her presentation aroused inspiring discussion about the concept of erasure in Islamic aesthetic thought, among many other thought-provoking subjects.