Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian

Busan, South Korea

Curated by Artistic Directors: Cristina Ricupero and Jörg Heiser

8 September - 11 November 

We'd like to congratulate Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian on their inclusion at The Busan Biennale 2018. As an independently created international contemporary art exhibition, the Busan Biennale has distinguished itself from other biennials with its expression of Busan’s city identity and its experimental and dynamic exhibitions.

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BACKLIT Gallery, Nottingham

26 May - 17 July

Featuring Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian's video animation Big Rock Candy Mountain, alongside works by Slavs and Tatars, Samson Young, Taus Makhacheva, Leila Al-Yousuf and Ryan Heath, the exhibition refers to the Caucasus region between Europe and Asia, known for its large number of distinct languages and cultures.

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Warehouse421, Abu Dhabi

5 May

Ramin & Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian will host a participatory community activity at Warehouse421, experimenting with archival images from the UAE's history. Originally created for the UAE's National Pavilion at Venice Biennale, Rock Paper Scissors: Positions in Play, this exercise re-interprets archival photographs, including images of Sheikh Zayed and pivotal moments in the history of the UAE by magnifying some of their less obvious peripheral elements. Visitors are invited to take part using their mobile phones or cameras, re-photographing the archival images and finding their own story in them.

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Booth C35

Tour & Taxis, Brussels

19 - 22 April

We are pleased to participate in the 50th edition of Art Brussels with works by Hassan Sharif, Mohammed Kazem as well as collaborative and individual works by Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian.

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Screening and Discussion

Concrete, Alserkal Avenue

Wednesday 7 March, 7:00 pm

As part of the public programme for Ishara, guest artists Ramin, Rokni and Hesam will be in conversation with exhibition curator Karim Sultan to discuss ideas of communication, language and storytelling. This dialogue will explore the references accumulated by the artists, tracing their influences that relate to the theme of language and sign-making.

The screening will focus on Aakkaandi (2014-15) a 35 minute 17 second long video that depicts a pig-faced tourist-curator clutching a tote bag visit a tailoring shop to get a new dress copied. A doctor and his violently shushing nurse administer everything from injections to dental reconstruction. Improvised with Idrani Sirisena and Edward St, who live and work at the villa that the artists share, these short, simple vignettes are interspersed with the couple's recollection of the Sri Lankan Civil War and the political machinations that stoked the conflict. The work culminates in a collaboratively painted canvas that they steadily layer with Tamil lettering. Several sections of Aakkaandi were filmed by Edward St and many of the images in the film are inspired by the works of exiled Tamil poets, particularly 'The Aakkaandi Bird' by Shanmugam Sivalingan and '21 May 1986' by R Cheran.

Concrete, Alserkal Avenue

Curated by Karim Sultan

5 March - 1 April

UAE Unlimited, in collaboration with Alserkal Programming presents Ishara: Signs, Symbols and Shared Languages featuring works by 10 UAE-based artists Amna Al Dabbagh, Cheb Moha, Chndy, Dina Khorchid, Farah Al Qasimi, Flounder Lee, Nasir Nasrallah, Saba Qizilbash, Salem Al Mansoori, and Shaikha Al Ketbi, in addition to visual poetry by guest artists Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian. The concept of the exhibition is derived from a broad understanding of the meaning and use of language. The curatorial process for the exhibition has been thematically informed by the idea of "lingua franca," which hints at constructed, second or third languages that were used to aid communication between various groups or in situations where communication was difficult.

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Fort Island, Madinat Jumeirah

Commissioned by Shumon Basar

Wednesday 21 March, 5:30 - 6:30 pm

Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, alongside Yuri Pattison, Ania Soliman and Melissa Gronlund will discuss how artists are engaging with technologies of automation, as well as the ever-increasing automation of the world. What new kinds of aesthetics, experiences and knowledge emerge. From interactive puppetry to robot choreography via the unconscious intent of algorithms, the artists discuss their ideas and work, and the complex concerns facing the current moment.

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Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai

Booth E6

15 - 18 March

We are pleased to participate in the 11th edition of Art Dubai with works by Hassan Sharif, Mohammed Kazem, Abdelkader Benchamma, Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian.

Kunsthalle Zurich

Curated by Daniel Baumann

4 March - 7 May

Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian participate in Speak, Lokal, a group exhibition that focuses on how artists worldwide investigate and broach local conditions. All sorts of artistic practices come into play, from activism to "archivism", from photography to graphic novels, from documentaries to performances and research based communal efforts. Paradoxically, the restricted and highly connoted territory of the Local is perceived as a place of autonomy and liberation, a space where precision is possible and needed to uncover discrepancies and make a difference. If Speak, Lokal is foremost an optimistic proposition, it does not gloss over the ambiguity of the Local as it neighbours on the dangerous territories of nationalism, provincialism, and commercialism - a trend typified in the well-known slogan "Buy Local!" Perhaps, after all, the Local is just a fiction (or a phantasy) - albeit a powerful one. The trio will premiere their new rotoscope animation From Sea to Dawn, which sees them print almost 3000 stills from news footage, paint on each of the printed images, photograph the results and stitch them together to form the 6 minute 21 second video. 

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Guggenheim Abu Dhabi

Curated by Valerie Hillings, Sasha Kalter-Wasserman, Sarah Dwider and Maisa Al Qassimi

Beginning 8 March

Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority has commissioned Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian to create an immersive and interactive installation for the second exhibition of works from the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi collection. Entitled Another Happy Day (2016-17), the installation emphasises the resonance of the past in the present and the power of representation across time by charting a historical continuum from the 1930s to today. The multi-room installation will feature site-specific paintings, videos, and artworks by artists including Nargess Hashemi and Laleh Khorramian and from the artists' art collection. It will take visitors on a journey through distinctive yet interconnected episodes or acts that offer reflections on the nature of art and how we represent ourselves and the world in which we live through words, images, gestures, and movement.

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Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw

Curated by Magda Kardasz, in cooperation with Magdalena Komornicka

Until 31 January 2017

Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian's participate in Social Calligraphies, a group exhibition featuring works by artists from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. The exhibition looks at history, culture, or the political, social, and economic problems of the artists' home countries from a distance, and presenting them in a broader framework. The theme of the show touches upon issues of identity, aesthetics of disappearance, war and culture, the archeology of future (set between the realm of local legends and science fiction), geometry and architecture, the position of women (in between tradition and global dreams), and the role of the artist. The Haerizadeh brothers and Rahmanian present a video animation Big Rock Candy Mountain (2015) and a film Chai-e Iran (2013).

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9 July - 16 October 2016

Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian have been commissioned to create a series of installations, performances and sculptures for Liverpool Biennial 2016. This will be realised through a wide range of media permeating throughout the city, with artwork revolving around the question "What if?", creating new narratives as audiences explore Liverpool Biennial. At Cains Brewery, they will create work on-site, using 'smuggled' objects shipped from Dubai to Liverpool by container.

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Focus, Booth A16

Randall's Island Park, New York

5 - 8 May

We are pleased to announce our participation in Frieze New York with Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, where the conquering folds of a new work imagined by the Iranian artist trio have transformed the New York Times-published Obama: The Historic Journey (2009) into a tale of our times. An onslaught of tropes sprung from globalized corporate visual culture, collaged onto the individually traced pages of the original book, cast a silhouetted Obama as the ultimate business manager. Strategies of concealing and revealing unfold across these pages, as the original images peer out from behind the masking of collaged imagery. The 27 drawings are excerpted moments from the wider sequence, freeze-framed and contemplated-a glimpse of the curtain being lifted on a largely unfathomable collaborative creation that ultimately seems to be the product of a sole hand.

Read full essay by Kevin Jones

Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai, UAE
Booth E8

16 - 19 March

  
We are pleased to participate in the 10th edition of Art Dubai with works by Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, Hesam Rahmanian, Hassan Sharif, Haleh Redjaian, Mohammed Kazem and Xu Qu.

Published by Edition Patrick Frey
Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian's Her Majesty? is a limited edition facsimile where the trio have completely overhauled the XL coffee table publication, which was published by Taschen Verlag in 2012 about the life of Queen Elizabeth II. Her Majesty? is now available at the gallery and each book comes with a unique, handmade cover of only 600 copies. 

For more information and to order a copy online, please click here.  

IFEMA - Feria de Madrid, Spain

Booth 7D12

24 - 28 February

We are pleased to participate in the 35th edition of ARCOmadrid where Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian will present works from the Big Rock Candy Mountain series.

Much of the artists' work involves the appropriation of images and objects from magazines, markets, the Internet and mass media. In preparation for Big Rock Candy Mountain, they printed 1000 stills from news footage, painted on each of the printed images, photographed the results, and stitched them together to form the video. The source imagery depicts the destruction of cultural artefacts in war-torn countries like Syria and Iraq by individuals affiliated with the Islamic State (ISIS). By slowing down the imagery, the artists discover obscure details, relationships, and editing techniques that they intensify through their own manipulations, including doubling, collage, and figurative drawing.

ICA | The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, USA 

Organised by assistant curator Ruth Erickson with curatorial assistant Jeffrey De Blois

Until 27 March

The Birthday Party is the trio's first museum exhibition in the USA and borrows its title from a 1953 play by Nobel prize winning English writer Harold Pinter, a surreal comedy about a party organised as a ploy to get the character to sit down. The Haerizadeh brothers and Rahmanian began their version as a kind of a party-cum-performance in August at Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde. During the performance, they shuffled around the space in costumes made of long prayer robes that obscured their vision, spilling paint across a floor they constructed, while unwrapping presents and making accumulative sculptures out of their contents. 
In the current installation at the ICA, they bring together some of the remnants from the performance - the painted floor, the sculptures, and the video documentation - with a number of new works and a selection of works by other artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Bahman Mohassess, Ree Morton and Hassan Sharif.

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Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia

Until 10 April

All The Rivers Run Into The Sea. Over. / Copy. Yet, The Sea Is Not Full. Over. (2015) challenges the conventional modes of display and standards of value. Every inch of the room is covered, including walls and floors, with no concern for hierarchy and preciousness. Their medley of influences ranges from satirical folk theatre, illuminated manuscripts, miniature painting and Persian poetry, to Modernist art and Pop culture. 

The trio discuss their collaborative practice in this youtube video: APT8 Artist Interview | Ramin and Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian at QAGOMA.

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