Azita Moradkhani: The Real Beneath

Jane Lombard Gallery is pleased to present Iranian-American artist Azita Moradkhani’s first solo exhibition in New York, The Real Beneath. The artist’s work was previously shown at the gallery in last spring’s group exhibition say the dream was real and the wall imaginary, curated by Joseph R. Wolin. Reflecting upon her own experiences as a woman in both Iran and in the U.S., Moradkhani’s practice is rooted in the personal, and inescapably, the political; her new body of work is contemporaneous with the Woman Life Freedom revolution and other movements for women’s rights internationally. The exhibition will feature finely-detailed drawings in colored pencil that intertwine the lacey filigree of delicate lingerie with charged imagery. A selection of hand-painted body casts, of and by the artist, and gauzy, printed textiles, will also be included.

Moradkhani's work in drawing and sculpture focuses on the female body as a complex locus of pleasure and pain, venerated yet vulnerable. A symbol subjected to societal norms, scrutiny, and violence in public and private, the body is a subversive form in Moradkhani’s layered compositions; the sensuality of the drawings seduce the viewer’s gaze, only to confront them with embodied images of political uprisings, historical and current events, and human exploitation. This disruptive iconography – The Real Beneath – challenges the fraying constructs of nationhood and belief inherited by the artist, unraveling across her new body of work. 

Two worlds – birthplace and adopted home – live alongside one another in Moradkhani’s work. Both realms join intimately on the picture plane, whether in 2-D on paper, or on 3-D casts of her own body. In her sculptural work, through the collaborative process of casting her body, and in her printed textile work, she emphasizes the marks of history and memory on the body and its coverings. The artist’s debut solo exhibition in New York invites viewers to engage with the cross-cultural and intergenerational struggle for women’s rights from Moradkhani’s point of view, and to stand in solidarity with those who continue this pursuit in the U.S., in Iran, and throughout the world.

About Azita Moradkhani
Azita Moradkhani was born in Tehran where she was exposed to Persian art and culture, as well as Iranian politics, and that double exposure increased her sensitivity to the dynamics of vulnerability and violence that she now explores in her art-making. She received her BFA from Tehran University of Art (2009), and both her MA in Art Education (2013) and her MFA in drawing, painting and sculpture (2015) from Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University. Currently, she teaches at Parsons School of Design and Rhode Island School of Design.

She was a recipient of both the Young Masters Art Prize and the Young Masters Emerging Woman Art Prize in London in 2017. She received the Saint Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artists Grant that same year as well as the NYFA City Artist Corps Grants in 2021. The Financial Times (London) reviewed her series of drawings “Victorious Secrets” and the Boston Globe (MA) published reviews of her collaborative performance piece “Irezumi,” and her curated exhibition “Echo” over the past few years. 

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally many times, including at the Royal Academy of Arts (London, UK), Newport Art Museum (RI, USA), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Yinchuan, China). She has also been a visiting artist/lecturer at universities such as Davidson College (NC), Lesley University (MA), and the Parsons School of Design (NY), as well as a panelist at Harvard University, Southern New Hampshire University, and MIT. She has been granted numerous residencies, including Yaddo, Virginia Center For the Creative Arts (VCCA), the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), Silver Art Projects, Atlantic Center for the Arts (ACA), and LMCC.