Maryam Amiryani / Sarah Tortora

NADA Miami 2022 Booth 5.03

November 30—December 3, 2022

Ice Palace Studios, 1400 North Miami Avenue

Ulterior Gallery will present Texas-based Iranian painter Maryam Amiryani and Brooklyn-based American sculptor Sarah Tortora at NADA Miami 2022, opening on November 30, 2022, at Ice Palace Studios, 1400 N Miami Ave. in Miami, FL. The presentation will be on view until December 3, 2022.

The two artists come from different generations and backgrounds and work with different visions and contexts; they will exhibit new works that inform each other’s conceptual underpinnings when shown together in dialogue.

Excalibur (Double Helix), Tortora’s 7’ x 2’ x 6’ sculpture will occupy the center of the 10’ x 10’ booth. The artist created an abstract rock-like formation built from foam, plaster, and concrete, which is formed around a large square spiral made from wood, inextricable from the stone. The work conjures ideas relating to the accumulation of time and nature, with the spiral suggesting an ammonite fossil or an hourglass spindle. While abstract, Tortora’s sculpture contains narrative allusions—telling a story that goes far beyond the materials and individual sculptural parts. The materials themselves are derived from organic processes, and speak to aspects of nature and periods of remote geological time. Tortora derived the concept of a wooden spiral seemingly trapped in stone from the “sword in the stone” of Arthurian legend. On the wooden surface of the spiral, a shadow of an extended arm and hand are visible as if it is about to grasp the form. However, Tortora’s version is angled and square and impossible to remove, indicating that there are no kings, and no possibility for a “rightful king.”

Amiryani comes from an aristocratic family that was forced to flee her native country, an experience that led her to call into question the role of social hierarchies and class. Her new series of five still-life paintings of figurines of wild animals is entitled Safari. Inspired by her recent trips to East Africa, where she was captivated by the relationships between exotic animals, the local people, and nature, Amiryani determined to create her own safari. The development of human culture that continues to have a deep and irreversible impact on these animals and this land due to habitat encroachment, poaching, and hunting, prompted her to ask—which part of these relationships will remain seven generations from now? Amiryani’s use of the figurine refers to the layers of her complicated childhood—being from a prominent family that had to make their escape from Iran during the revolution. The Western plastic figurines bear a relationship to Iranian miniatures from her childhood; at the same time, their detachment from real animals reiterates the artist’s own separation from her country and her past identity. The Swahili word “safari” means “taking a journey,” further echoing Amiryani’s trip to Africa, as well as her journey through life from Iran to Marfa, Texas, and from nobility to minority.

Maryam Amiryani was born in Iran in 1967, but was forced to leave her homeland when the Iranian Revolution erupted in 1979. She moved with her family first to France, and later to the United States. Since 2004, she has been based in Marfa, TX. Sarah Tortora was born in New Haven, CT, in 1988. She moved to New York during the pandemic in 2020 to engage in a new endeavor, and is now based in Brooklyn, NY. In July 2022, Tortora was awarded a year-long ISCP studio program grant along with Toby Devan Lewis fellowship.

For further inquries, please contact the gallery director Takako Tanabe: takako@ulteriorgallery.com

Press

Cultured Magazine Astroturf and Nostalgia Are on Display at the 20th Edition of NADA Miami. December 1, 2022.