FROM FIRE: NC QIN & ALI TAHAYORI This exhibition by Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre unites the artistic practices of NC Qin and Ali Tahayori. Both these contemporary artists have gained recognition as ‘ones to watch’ after years of innovative and explorative creative practice. Their unique and distinctive use of glass and mirrors stands out and has become a hallmark of their work, along with the use of their personal histories and experiences. Together in FROM FIRE, they explore how challenging it can be to forge your own identity and feel a sense of belonging in Australia, their home. Whether ingrained from birth or passed down via intergeneration memory, rigid cultural values, and laws clash with their way of life in Australia and their sense of self. Like many who have migrated or been raised within cultural systems worlds away from where they live, work, and love, questions about who they are, and where they belong persist. Enduring the fire and observing your identity split, reflect, fade, shatter, refract, intensify, crack, and somehow re-form stronger than ever all in one motion, again and again, is a common experience and it is conveyed via the symbolic power of glass, performance, mirrors, language and light in this intimate exhibition. Glass Armour (Performance) by Qin and OUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE by Tahayori ultimately tells a compelling narrative about the courage and emotion that it takes to fight for belonging and self-authenticity in a disorientating and hostile world. Ali Tahayori was born in Shiraz, Iran. Tahayori currently lives and works in Sydney, Australia. Raised in the oppressively homophobic climate of 1980s Iran, Tahayori assumed the identity of an outsider, further compounded by his migration to Australia in 2007. Tahayori has an interdisciplinary practice that ranges from conceptual photography to the moving image, mirror works and installation.He holds a Doctorate in Medicine and MFA in Photomedia from National Art School. Tahayori has exhibited locally and internationally and has been a finalist and winner of several local and International art prizes. Tahayori is represented by This Is No Fantasy, Melbourne. The piece OUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE is made from many tiny pieces of mirror typically used to elaborately decorate mosques in Tahayori's hometown. Each tiny piece is meticulously arranged and installed to convey a new message and meaning. The mirror, already laden with Iran’s culture and history, becomes the medium to tell Tahayori’s personal story. Integral to the work and his practice, he integrates poetic language (Farsi and English) and light to show how hard it is to grasp a sense of home and belonging when it is always shifting in and out of legibility and oscillating between safe and dangerous.
FROM FIRE: NC QIN & ALI TAHAYORI This exhibition by Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre unites the artistic practices of NC Qin and Ali Tahayori. Both these contemporary artists have gained recognition as ‘ones to watch’ after years of innovative and explorative creative practice. Their unique and distinctive use of glass and mirrors stands out and has become a hallmark of their work, along with the use of their personal histories and experiences. Together in FROM FIRE, they explore how challenging it can be to forge your own identity and feel a sense of belonging in Australia, their home. Whether ingrained from birth or passed down via intergeneration memory, rigid cultural values, and laws clash with their way of life in Australia and their sense of self. Like many who have migrated or been raised within cultural systems worlds away from where they live, work, and love, questions about who they are, and where they belong persist. Enduring the fire and observing your identity split, reflect, fade, shatter, refract, intensify, crack, and somehow re-form stronger than ever all in one motion, again and again, is a common experience and it is conveyed via the symbolic power of glass, performance, mirrors, language and light in this intimate exhibition. Glass Armour (Performance) by Qin and OUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE by Tahayori ultimately tells a compelling narrative about the courage and emotion that it takes to fight for belonging and self-authenticity in a disorientating and hostile world. Ali Tahayori was born in Shiraz, Iran. Tahayori currently lives and works in Sydney, Australia. Raised in the oppressively homophobic climate of 1980s Iran, Tahayori assumed the identity of an outsider, further compounded by his migration to Australia in 2007. Tahayori has an interdisciplinary practice that ranges from conceptual photography to the moving image, mirror works and installation.He holds a Doctorate in Medicine and MFA in Photomedia from National Art School. Tahayori has exhibited locally and internationally and has been a finalist and winner of several local and International art prizes. Tahayori is represented by This Is No Fantasy, Melbourne. The piece OUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE is made from many tiny pieces of mirror typically used to elaborately decorate mosques in Tahayori's hometown. Each tiny piece is meticulously arranged and installed to convey a new message and meaning. The mirror, already laden with Iran’s culture and history, becomes the medium to tell Tahayori’s personal story. Integral to the work and his practice, he integrates poetic language (Farsi and English) and light to show how hard it is to grasp a sense of home and belonging when it is always shifting in and out of legibility and oscillating between safe and dangerous.
