Fragments, Particles and the Mechanisms of Growth. Installation view at KIOSK, Belgium, 2017
Nazgol Ansarinia has developed an extensive body of work that attempts to understand the role of architecture in delineating interior and exterior spaces within the context of both public and private spheres.
Drawing from the immediacy of her surroundings, Ansarinia has primarily been focused on the changing landscape of Tehran - a city that has become a primary source of material for the artist.
Nazgol Ansarinia, Fabrications series, in collaboration with Roozbeh Elias-Azar, 2013, Plaster, resin and paint
Ansarinia's Fabrications (2013) are small, monochromatic architectural models that, upon close examination, are fantastic hybrids of new and old: the bland architecture of the typical Tehran apartment or tower appears to be harbouring impossible combinations of domes, minarets, wind towers and porticos.
Research photo for the series Fabrications
Ansarinia's point of departure was the fanciful murals she found painted on the exterior walls of tall buildings - often cheery combinations of clear blue sky and nostalgic traditional architecture, both elements sorely missing from the real world.
“I think my work has made me a more observant person, and through it I have perhaps discovered or come to know a small part of the vast and complex Iranian context.”
- Nazgol Ansarinia
Surfaces & Solids, Nazgol Ansarinia. Installation view at Green Art Gallery, Dubai, 2015
Pillars (2014-19), draw a parallel between architecture and the economy. The hollow-bodied forms of the pillars' capitals are shaped by the script of the Iranian constitution's Chapter IV on Economy and Financial Affairs.
The deliberate cut in the pillars not only exposes the inner content of the architectural form but also symbolically challenges their very purpose as structures.
Nazgol Ansarinia, Pillars series, 2014-2019
Nazgol Ansarinia, Installation view at The Spark is You: Parasol unit in Venice, Italy, 2019
Water features are an integral component of Iranian architecture. Homes and gardens traditionally featured a shallow pool or howz, which was variously used to cool and humidify the dry air, for washing and other household activities, or simply to create beauty. During the prosperous 1960s, swimming pools were added into the mix. Yet looking at Tehran from above reveals a curious phenomenon. Empty pools pock wealthier areas of the city like air bubbles or little icepick scars.
Lakes Drying, Tides Rising, Nazgol Ansarinia. Installation view at Green Art Gallery, Dubai, 2022
In the linked bodies of work on view in her current exhibition Lakes Drying, Tides Rising at Green Art Gallery, the artist focuses on the northern Tehran district of Jordan, taking a municipality map as her starting point. Its area is just 3km2 but features over 1100 such pools, which occupy close to 5000m2 and are labeled as “private waters.”
Lakes Drying, Tides Rising, Nazgol Ansarinia. Installation view at Green Art Gallery, Dubai, 2022
Nazgol Ansarinia, Connected pools, 2020, Blue plaster
Connected Pools (2020) brings five or six pools together at a time, their dimensions faithfully reproduced from the municipality document. Washed in blue, they suggest rooftop water features on the kinds of stacked, multi-floor buildings that now crowd Tehran. The mushrooming of such high rises and an attendant lack of privacy, along with widespread water shortages as a result of both climate change and resource diversion and mismanagement, mean that these open-air spaces have largely remained unused since the Islamic Revolution.
Nazgol Ansarinia, Lakes drying tides rising, 2022, Plaster and pigment colour
Her newest series of large sculptures and accompanying drawings from the series Lakes drying tides rising (2022) assemble a greater number of the Jordan neighbourhood’s watery voids into composite, irregularly honeycombed lakes. Like the pools in Tehran and perhaps the country as a whole, these lakes exist at a precarious interstice between wetness and dryness.
Nazgol Ansarinia, Lakes drying tides rising, 2022, Ink on film
Nazgol Ansarinia walks us through the research and processes behind her solo exhibition Lakes Drying, Tides Rising, currently on view at Green Art Gallery, Dubai.
This latest monograph, Inquiries Into the Present, surveys the artist's work of the last fifteen years in sculptures, installation, drawing, and video. Ansarinia’s works are largely observational and technical in their scope, offering insight into the issues that are most pressing and urgent for today’s cities and the populations that inhabit them.
About the Artist
Born in 1979 in Tehran, Nazgol Ansarinia graduated from the London College of Communication in 2001 before taking a Master of Fine Arts at the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco in 2003.
Recent exhibitions include: C4, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Liechtenstein (forthcoming); Lakes Drying, Tides Rising, Green Art Gallery, Dubai (2022); The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10), Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia (2021); Hungry for Time, curated by Raqs Media Collective, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria (2021); Reflections: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa, The British Museum, London, UK (2021); DEMO, MAK Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA (2020); The Room Becomes a Street, curated by Aram Moshayedi, Argo Factory, Tehran, Iran (2020) (solo); Revolution Begins at Home, with Architects Hamed Khosravi and Roozbeh Elias-Azar, Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Sharjah, UAE (2019); The Spark is You: Parasol Unit in Venice, curated by Ziba Ardalan, 58th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2019); Fragments, Particles and the Mechanisms of Growth, KIOSK, Ghent, Belgium (2017) (solo); Women House, Monnaie de Paris, Paris, France (2017); What We Know that We Don’t Know, KADIST, San Francisco, USA (2017); Planet 9, Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Germany (2017); Variable Dimensions, Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon, Portugal (2017); The Eighth Climate (What Does Art Do?), Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea (2016); and Adventure of the Black Square: Abstract Art and Society 1915-2015, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2015) among others.
She lives and works in Tehran, Iran.