Sanaz Mazinani | Frames of the Visible

Exhibition Dates: May 5 – June 9, 2012

Reception for the Artist: Saturday, May 5, 2-5pm

Artist Talk: Saturday, May 5,1-2p (RSVP as seating is limited)

The gallery is pleased to present our first solo exhibition by Canadian-Iranian photographer Sanaz Mazinani.  In “Frames of the Visible,” Mazinani examines the disassociation that occurs between an event and its photographic record. Using destabilizing images of war mined from online news media outlets, Mazinani constructs photographic collages that collapse the intimations of the original image, thus creating a new representation of conflict.

Mazinani explores the relationship between perception and representation by drawing from concepts such as censorship, scale, and the body as a site of action or violence. For instance, juxtaposing appropriated images of a female suicide bomber and of media darling Paris Hilton, creates a new meaning that can affect our understanding of an image and how it is used to illustrate and construct history. The geometric patterns created by sequentially coupling, repeating, mirroring, and multiplying her source material references Islamic ornamentation, pairing traditional Eastern and contemporary Western image production techniques. These works examine the radical ways in which individuals perceive the same object with differing complexity. Mazinani seeks to recognize how political realities are represented in photography. She visions the perspectival frames of warfare, while acknowledging the complicated nature of our modern existence in a globalized world.