Nina Colosi 

Founder and Creative Director of Streaming Museum

Sharifzadeh’s meticulously crafted and beautiful compositions of visuals and sound interweaves notions of the fragility of life and the forces that interrupt it. They slip from her subconscious that has been indelibly impressed with memories of political and social complexities in her native Iran, fueling the profound world questions she confronts, and emerging in a body of work that has great aesthetic and emotional impact.

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On view from March 2015, at Soho20 Chelsea Gallery, New York, Story of a Curse brings together Negin Sharfizadeh’s newest stop-motion animated film, Story of a Curse #1, and a series of sculptural works and hand-painted prints drawn out of the film making process. There will be an opening reception from 6 to 8 pm on Thursday, March 3, and an artist talk in conversation with Aphrodite Désirée Navab, on Saturday March 28, at 2 pm.

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    Story of a Curse was inspired by the story of the artist’s mother moving through loss and despair after the still birth of her first child and only son. Birth, a symbol of bringing new life, had now changed to delivering death into the world of the living. She came to believe that she had been cursed. The film both explores the dreams of motherhood, the bond between a baby in the womb and the mother, and the role of magic can play in our processes of grief and resilience.

Sharifzadeh has developed an organic suite of techniques, “making magic happen with projected light and found materials,” in the words of Lili White, founder of the AXWFFestival. She peels away the traditional sculptural methods of building and casting, and working with everything from needlework learned from her grandmother to assemblages of found objects, wire mesh, wax and plaster. Her animations are painstakingly constructed through these same processes and materials, including a custom-built multi-planar animation stand incorporating layers of glass. Through these methods, Sharifzadeh has found a resonance between the themes she is exploring and the works, allowing her stories to slip almost unconsciously into the materials through the obsessive actions of her hands creating.

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      For more information please contact the gallery at 212-367-8994 or info@soho20gallery.com