The Empty Chair
and culture. My living environment, prior experience, and being a mother all have a huge effect on my artistic vision. In Iranian art history, painting was a way to tell true and mythical stories. Colors, meaning, and timelessness have always captivated me in Persian miniatures. The artist of these delightful Persian miniatures created beautiful landscapes while maintaining a timeless sense of harmony. Persian miniatures inspire me and have had a significant impact on me. The body of works that we have selected for this special edition of LandEscape and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article, has at once impressed us for the way it challenges the dynamics of perception through sapient combination between reminders to reality and powerful sense of imagination, to shed a whole new light on the ideas of familiarity, capturing such unconventional beauty in the ordinary: when walking our readers through your usual setup and process, would you tell us how did you develop your idea? Jaleh Farshi: The most important aspect of art, in my view, is its influence on people. I enjoy taking my audience's imaginations to locations they've seen but forgotten. When I paint my The Mirror The Sound of Silence
emotions, I have a sense of timelessness that I try to convey to my audience. I try not to have any particular setup or presumptions when I start working. I paint with my intuition. I let it begin and end on its own. Then I return to it and make adjustments as needed. Canvas, for me, is the place where the reality and the imagination merge. Throughout my early artistic experience, still-life painting captivated me. Setting up a still life with ordinary items and experimenting with various lighting, was a valuable learning experience. My goal is to give value and meaning to the ordinary things around me. These paintings are familiar and ordinary, which helps the viewer to interact with them on a personal level. Later in my journey, I became intrigued by the influence of light and shadow in conceptual works. I explored the scattering of moonlight on objects in my "Moon" series. Moonlight is mystical, elusive, and full of beauty. In these works, I attempted to merge my intuition and imagination with what we call reality. I tried to capture the tranquility and stillness of objects and people at night in the moonlight and share it with my audience. Much of your inspiration comes from the landscapes of your native country: how do you select the locations that you depict in your artworks? Jaleh Farshi: They are, indeed, from Iran's landscape. At different times of the year, I travel to different parts of my country. I take photos and transform them to create a new scene. My inspiration comes from nature, but I paint from my emotions and intuition. I'm not afraid to use my imagination to turn the real world into a work of art on canvas. scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
Jaleh Farshi scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land The portal to the past
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition The Swamp
Jaleh Farshi scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land We have appreciated the way you extend the notion of landscape, beyond it common acceptation associated to merely geographical meaning, rethinking it as a recollection of the past that we've all experienced at some stage in our lives: how do you consider the role of memory and of your everyday life's experience, in your creative process? Jaleh Farshi: Memory is the recollection of events and things that we want to keep in our minds. We form them in such a way that they are often far from reality, and this is the beauty of it. For me, nature is a constant source of harmony, joy, and inspiration. In a world full of bad news, uncertainty, and tension, I believe there is a need to reconnect with nature in order to find peace and calm. We must keep some beautiful images from nature in our minds, change them as we see fit, carve them in our memories, and return to them whenever we need to find peace in our minds. I try to recall and paint these pictures from my memory. I invite the viewers to immerse themselves in my paintings and find familiar images to forget the tension and all the bad news in the world. I believe the viewer will be able to interact with these imaginary landscapes and find peace. Austrian Art historian Ernst Gombrich once remarked the importance of providing a space for the viewers to project onto, so that they can actively participate in the creation of the meaning behind the work of art: as an artist particularly interested in creating artwork recognizable to all, how important is for you to trigger the viewers' imagination in order to address them to elaborate personal interpretations? In particular, how open would you like your works to be understood? Jaleh Farshi: I believe that art should be accessible to people of all backgrounds and that everyone should be able to enjoy and explore it. I see my drawings as a bridge between my mind and the
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition minds of those who see them. I try to paint in such a way that this connection is created by focusing on things that are familiar in everyone's life. When I start painting the objects around me, I unconsciously transform them in a way that expresses my emotions. I love it when my audience understands these spaces and interprets them in their own way. With their unique combination between abstract sensitiveness and references to elements from daily life — sometimes even to domestic life — your paintings represent subjects that are familiar from reality, but also part of the artistic imagination: how do you consider the relationship between the real and the imagined playing within your artistic practice? Jaleh Farshi: Everybody's response to external reality is very personal and unique. I try to alter objects and concepts in my mind when I paint, and sometimes the objects I paint on canvas are my interpretation of reality. My intention is to reflect my perception of the Full Moon New Moon
Moonlight
Whispering
outside world while also encouraging audiences to explore not only my paintings but also their own inner worlds. On canvas, I believe there is no difference between what is real and what is imagined. We would like to ask you how do you consider the role of intuition in your process: do you create your works gesturally, instinctively, or do you methodically transpose geometric schemes? In particular, how important is Jaleh Farshi scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land The Green Horizon
improvisation for you? Jaleh Farshi: When I start painting I often visualize things in my head, shape them , alter them , and then paint them on canvas. Occasionally, the colors appear unintentionally during the process, and the forms change on their own. This is my favorite part of the experience. This can be seen in my "Moon" and "Landscape" series. In still-life works, I thought about composition and light in my scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition The Golden Meadow
The Imaginary Autumn
The Blue Meadow
___ 14 head and alter the scene in a way that my intuition directs. We definitely love the way your artworks challenges the viewers' perception, urging them to look inside of what appear to be seen, rather than its surface. This aspect of your practice reflect what you have remarked in your artist's statement, when you underlined that your are not governed by what is true: how does representation and a tendency towards conceptual abstraction find their balance in your work? Jaleh Farshi: I don’t paint exactly what I see. Reality is filtered through my feelings and imaginations. I add my memories to the picture and remove some pieces to make it more in Landscape in the Mist scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
tune with my soul. I try to make these adjustments in such a way that they are pleasant for the viewer. This process, I believe, leads to conceptual abstraction on its own. Concepts, I believe, can be better understood when viewed in the simplest way possible. Painting the simple ordinary things, in my opinion, is the best way to express emotions and ideas. Over the years your artworks have been showcased in a number of occasions: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? By the way, as the move of Art from traditional gallery spaces, to street and especially to online platforms — as Instagram — increases, how would in your scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Jaleh Farshi Land The Red Hill
Dream Land
opinion change the relationship with a globalised audience? Jaleh Farshi: I believe that the relationship between an artist and audience is extremely delicate. in my mind there are lots of benefits in online platforms and we are missing some elements. In conventional gallery environments limited duration of each exhibition makes it impossible for the viewer to go and look at all artworks . The advantage scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition The old jar of jam
of an online platform is that the viewer can see all artworks from the comfort of their own home for as long as they want. Another significant aspect for me is that people from all over the world can see my artwork, which is only possible through online gallery and social media platforms like Instagram. Instagram allows you to have a personal gallery and interact with anyone who is interested in art. Here is my Instagram link Jaleh Farshi scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land The Copper Kettle
https://www.instagram.com/jaleh farshi and I would love to hear thoughts about my work. We have really appreciated the multifaceted nature of your artistic research and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Jaleh. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition The Clay Pot
to explore in the future? Jaleh Farshi: I'd like to thank you and the entire LandEscape Team for creating this incredible insightful platform that connects artists from all over the world and helps them become familiar with each other's ideas, life experiences, and worldviews. My future plans include focusing on Iranian myths and researching the drawings on ancient pottery. This is a piece of my culture that I would like to introduce into my paintings. Part of our present truth, I believe, is rooted in our history and culture, which needs more attention. scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Jaleh Farshi Land The old blue jug
Hello Nadia and welcome to LandEscape. Before starting to elaborate on your artistic production, we would like to invite our readers to visit http://nadia-adina-rose.com and https://www.instagram.com/nadiadinarose in order to get a wide idea about who you are. We would start this interview with a couple of questions about your multifaceted background. You have a solid formal training: you hold a BFA from the Art College, in Moscow, and you later nurtured your education with a BFA from The Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and a MFA in Art In my work, I make us of ready-made textile objects related to my childhood experiences and impressions to see them surface in today’s reality, which is so different from that of the past – up to the point that the two seem to be incompatible. The textures, domestic objects and design patterns that were totally self-evident decades ago, during the epoch that has been over, in the country that does not exist any longer, are still present in my mind – as if they were the “gravity points” that affect my perception. I extract these objects out of my memory (they are still present: forgotten in the lower drawers of creaky wardrobes, on the shelves of the shops in the Russian provincial towns, all those old-school blankets, linen sheets, pillows and pillowcases) and re-figure them to find them a place in the world as I know it today. I sew and arrange objects that expand our traditional living space, turning it into a large-scale, panoramic vision where, by playing with things, I push them outside the boundaries of conventional everyday experience. This alters the traditional relationship between objects, their scale; and they become part of an expanded landscape, in which one can travel, moving ever further away and turning into a tiny speck on the horizon – while simultaneously also observing oneself without leaving one's room. In this way, I hope to recreate the sensation of overlapping "incompatible spaces" – which is familiar to us from virtual technology – using simple, "non-technological" means. I have been practicing soft sculpture, creating objects and placing them in space, or mounting them on walls. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] Land scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW LandEscape meets Nadia Adina Rose
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Blanket. 90x145 cm.
Education that you received from Beit Berl College: how did those formative years influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does your cultural substratum due to your years in Russia and your current life in Israel address your current artistic research? My identity as an artist was undoubtedly affected by years of formal education I Nadia Adina Rose scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Blanket, detail
received in Russia. Yet this impact was twofold, shaping my artistic preferences in a manner that hardly had been planned by my teachers there. Thanks to the formal, orthodox approach to both methodology and artistic vision, the classical drawing and painting techniques became a part of my artistic set up. No matter what, my right hand will move as drilled thousands of times and draw the lines exactly as the composition rules scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Clouds. 200x660 cm. Art & Design Biennale, Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv
prescribe. However, this very characteristic became my spell. No matter what, I won’t be able to change the lines drawn by my right hand perfectly trained. The approach underlying the artistic education in Israel was totally different. To me, it was like breathing in the air of freedom. Yet my right hand remained faithful to the tradition nurtured by generations of educators in the country of my origin. I tried to change the way I draw and Nadia Adina Rose scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
Door. 194x63x95 cm. ‘Over There’, Zuzu Galery, Hefer valley, Curator: Rotem Ritov
paint to make it fit my new reality, but at some point I realized that it was not possible. It became clear to me that if I want to be an artist, I should not fight who I already am, but rather find a way to “detour” these deeply ingrained skills. As a result, I started doing things I have never done before, something I had ultimately no experience in: sewing and sculpturing 3D objects. Even the illustrations I have made were originally sculptured from papier-mâché. You are a versatile artist and it is important to mention that you are a poet, too. You released “Snow Ink”, which won the 2016 Minister of Culture Award for Emerging Poets. It is available at https://afikbooks.com/shop. Your second book of poetry, “In the Belly of a Wolf”, has scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition from poetry book Snow Ink from poetry book Snow Ink
Nadia Adina Rose scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land just been published. Its manuscript was awarded with the prize of the Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers in Israel (ACUM). As a visual artist particularly interested in the theme of human perception, how do you consider the role of words in your practice as a poet? My relationship with words has been very complex in a literary sense. When I was 11 years old, I woke up one morning and realized I was not able to speak any more. I remember I saw my father that morning and tried to address him, but instead I was just stuttering, and he could not recognize a word I was saying. He seemed to be astounded and thought, at first, I was pretending. From that day, for years, words have been lost for me. Since I could not speak, at school I was asked to do all the tests and learning exercises in the from book And Then the Rhinoceros Began to Fly from book And Then the Rhinoceros Began to Fly
Forest. ‘Sleeves of the Trees’, Solo Exhibition, Janco-dada Museum, Ein Hod; Curator: Avital Katz
Angel. 230x160 cm.
written form. Yet it turned out I was suffering from dysgraphia as well – writing became a no lesser challenge. In fact, that was the main reason my parents signed me up for an art school. For me, visuality became a language alternative to words - something through which I could express myself and communicate without distortions and interruptions. In this regard, immigration became an opportunity to get the words back. Immigration implies acquiring a new identity be it as it may, and in my case a new language was a part of it. I started talking and writing poems in Hebrew – a language which I had never spoken beforehand. As if someone else were putting words together, and this someone else was me. There is always that gap between “me” and the one speaking and writing, as if I were standing at a distance and listening to myself. I think it is this gap, this gray area, where the poems come from. STUTTERING (translated from Hebrew by Linda Zisquit) Slowly like the promo before a film the days trailed along. A popsicle didn’t melt in the winter. “How old are you, little girl?” Age froze too, stuck to the lips, mumbling itself before me. With a tongue whetted for the future as far as the way from school I caught the snowflakes. I stuttered. Half words peeked out like gloves from a coat pocket. So with bare hands I held happiness unable to explain why it was good. For this special edition of LandEscape we have selected your Blanket Space series, a project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article, and that has at once impressed us for the way it achieve with simple means the difficult task of creating the sensation of overlapping "incompatible spaces", highlighting the bridge between traditional techniques and contemporary sensitiveness. When walking our readers through the genesis of your Blanket Space series would tell us how do you consider the relationship between Tradition and Contemporariness? To address this question, I would compare tradition to a warm, comfortable sleeve. To be a contemporary artist, you need to roll this sleeve up, to make your hand naked. Yet you have to have something to be rolled up; the hand has to know this feeling of being protected and warmed – before it starts sensing the cold air and working. With elements sapiently selected from the ordinary, your works feature powerful Nadia Adina Rose scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
narrative drive. As you have remarked in your artist's statement, you build your sculptural works out of different parts, as a mosaic, in order to expand consciousness, set up a new situation, and create a poetic metaphor through minimal means. How do you consider the role of symbols and evocative elements playing within your artistic process? And how important is for you to create artworks rich of allegorical qualities? scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Family Tree. 210x175 cm. ‘Bodyscapes’, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Curator: Dr. Adina Kamien-Kazhdan
Nadia Adina Rose scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Expectation. 225x225 cm.
Exit. 350x400 cm.
Exit, detail
In my case, the very medium of my artworks – textiles – has a symbolic meaning. Textiles are coded culturally, they evoke allusions – on both personal, and collective level. Choosing one fabric over another is already a statement. Moreover, because textiles are so loaded – in terms of emotions, memories and symbolic meaning they evoke, I do not perceive them as just a medium, but rather as partners in the artistic process. Whatever I do, I have to take into account what they are – a symbolic identity I have to accept or contest in each and every artwork. Marked out with such unique aesthetics, Blanket Space series struck us for the way it invites the viewer to elaborate personal associations. How important is for you to trigger the viewers' imagination in order to address them to elaborate personal interpretations? In particular, how open would you like your works to be understood? One of my artwork series is called “Hieroglyphs”. It consists of trees stretching out their branches, so that they cross the branches of the other trees and their shadows. That’s what I think the reality is. It is made up of messages. One could even say a message is a unit of the world. The thing is that for this world to be alive and working, you need a gap; a space filled with uncertainty and open for free interpretation, which also includes misunderstanding and ambiguity. A world in which everything is clear and explained just won’t survive. I can give you a personal example. I write poems in Hebrew – a language that is not my native one. I am constantly aware of the fact that there is something there which is not within my reach - some tiny aspects of meaning, allusions, and connotations. But it is this gap that sets everything in motion. A crucial aspect of your artistic practice is the way you push objects belonging to ordinary, often domestic life outside the boundaries of conventional everyday experience. Canadian multidisciplinary artist Angela Bulloch once remarked that objects and in particular works of art continue to evolve after they have been realized, simply by the fact that they are conceived with an element of change, or an inherent potential for some kind of shift to occur". We’d love to ask you about the qualities of the materials that you include in your artworks. How do you select them and what do you address to include them in your artworks? I totally agree with Angela Bulloch’s remark, yet I would add that objects from various realms differ in their potential to evolve in our perception. In this regard, it is the domestic objects that are the most stable ones – if not in the physical reality, then in our consciousness. Many of these objects accompany us for years; some of them had existed before we were born. It is often the case that the physical objects are getting older and shabbier, but we do not realize this is happening, because we project our memories upon them. I think one of the main purposes of art is to change the meaning of things, to create new connections through scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Nadia Adina Rose Land
Moon. 142x600 cm..
Mast. 206x100 cm. ‘Night Cruise’, Artspace Gallery, Tel Aviv; Curator: Shoshi Averbuch
metaphors; coming back to the previous question – to make their reality less rigid and more uncertain. To me, dealing with domestic objects adds to this challenge: providing how symbolically loaded they are and what gravity they have, the more you are able to “shift” them, the more powerful the change is. THE OTHER SIDE (translated from Hebrew by Linda Zisquit) The determination of the walls, the introvertedness of the rooms, the spasms of the clockface, the crushing of the chairs, the yearnings of the chandelier for the floor, the imprint of the shadows, the haughtiness of the windows, the solitude of the books, the bondage of the tiles, the prayer of the computer, the echo of the pots, the bumpiness of the habits, the generosity of the shelves, the back-rests of forgetfulness, the yawning of the doors, the squinting of the sockets, the delusions of the corners, the attentiveness of the steps, the gathering of the elbows with the table, the musings of the dust, the whirlpool of the drawers, the childishness of the stairs, the gutters of the voice, the calluses of the armchair, the shivering of the refrigerator, the spread of the spiderwebs, the hiding place of the glances in the cupboard, the memory of the broom, the inferiority of the stool, the expectations of the curtain, the lanes of the sofa, the rolodex of the thoughts, the wing of the face in the mirror, the curiosity of the toilet, the hallucination of the air conditioner, the breaths of the bed, the realization of the lamps, the swearing of the lock, the tangle of the grating, the tongue-slips of the burners. All this turns over now to the other side. The objects that you include in your artworks are related to your childhood experiences and impressions to see them surface in today’s reality: how do you consider the role memory is playing within your artistic process? The memory is the soil on which artistic process evolves and through which it is fed. MEMORIES (translated from Hebrew by Linda Zisquit) They lengthen with the years like the bangs hiding my eyes. Koo-koo! Koo-koo! No one sees me. And what can I do with them if not pull them back from my face gather them into the tail of a Trojan horse opening all the gates to the past. Your artworks achieve the difficult task of expanding our traditional living space, turning it into a large-scale, panoramic vision that provide the viewers with such an immersive visual experience: how do the dimensions of your artworks affect your workflow? By playing with dimensions, I try to push the objects outside the boundaries of Nadia Adina Rose scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
conventional everyday experience. They become part of an expanded landscape, in which one can travel, moving ever further away and turning into a tiny speck on the horizon – while simultaneously also observing oneself without leaving one's room. In this way, I hope to recreate the sensation of overlapping "incompatible spaces" – which is familiar to us from virtual technology – using simple, "non-technological" means. We have really appreciated the multifaceted nature of your artistic research and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Nadia. What projects scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Seasons. 260x600 cm. ‘Over There’, Zuzu Galery, Hefer valley, Curator: Rotem Ritov
are you currently working on and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? I am very interested in memory and its visual manifestations in our consciousness; in particular I would like to explore the role of landscapes in the development of one’s identity. As children we get exposed to landscapes and nature sights. In this way, gradually, the landscapes become a part of who we are. Planted in our memory, these landscapes remain tuned to the external reality since they exist there as well. Our internal landscapes are fed from our past experience, as well as from their external scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Nadia Adina Rose Land
counterparts. However, just like memories, these physical landscapes tend to change: they lose their fragments and gain new features by turning into urban areas, getting covered by water, or even burned. What happens if there is nothing to hold on out there any longer? How do the internal landscapes continue from there? What happens to our memory and, in a broader scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Sentence. 50x600 cm.