Barbad Golshiri: Of Mourning and Revolt: Episodes from Barbad Golshiri’s ‘Curriculum Mortis’

February 23, 2023 – April 7, 2023
Thomas Erben Gallery

526 West 26th Street, Floor 4
New York NY

(left) What Has Befallen Us, Barbad?, 2002. Single channel video, black and white, silent, 27 min. (right) Maryam Ashrafi, San Francisco, October 1st, 2022. Inkjet on photo paper, 47.25 x 31.5 in. Courtesy of the artist.

(left) What Has Befallen Us, Barbad?, 2002. Single channel video, black and white, silent, 27 min. (right) Maryam Ashrafi, San Francisco, October 1st, 2022. Inkjet on photo paper, 47.25 x 31.5 in. Courtesy of the artist.

Barbad Golshiri
Of Mourning and Revolt: Episodes from Barbad Golshiri’s ‘Curriculum Mortis’

Opening reception: Thursday, February 23, 6 – 8:30 pm.

Barbad Golshiri (b. 1982, Tehran) is an Iranian artist, whose work addresses what one could summarily characterize as the “Politics of Death”. Through his highly inventive engagement with various media such as video, performance, photography, and sculpture, including traditional calligraphy and critical writing, Golshiri confronts totalitarian ideologies, be they sacral or profane. Examples of his ongoing Curriculum Mortis – an account of death rather than life – conceived as episodes dating from 2002 to 2022, will be on view at the gallery from February 23 until April 8. The exhibition resonates at this contemporary moment when the uprising, by now labeled the Woman, Life, Freedom revolution, has engulfed the artist’s native country and mesmerized the entire globe. As part of his artistic activism, Golshiri has been and still is creating gravestones and memorials for those killed during this revolution.

Golshiri’s works are in such collections as the British Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Freiburg Modern Art Museum, South Florida University Museum, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, and cemeteries in Iran, France, and Canada. He now resides in France.