Yavuz Fine Art is pleased to announce the inaugural solo exhibition of Morvarid K. in Asia Pacific, on view at its gallery in Singapore.

Morvarid is of one Iran’s most talented new generation artists. Her work seeks to unearth the social in daily life in Tehran, even in the most banal circumstances, captured in her signature vibrant hues of colour photography.

With her new series Heart Dish, the artist retreats from street scenes and public spaces to the rooftops of her native Tehran, which are adorned with thousands of satellite dishes receiving foreign broadcasts of Farsi programmes, amongst others. In a closed society with heavily regulated national media, foreign satellite television programmes are one of the few sources of uncensored information, opinion and entertainment in Iran. Although satellite dishes were officially outlawed in 1994, Tehranis nonetheless continue to clandestinely install them, while the Iranian government in turn regularly engages in “satellite jamming” to disrupt the broadcasts, saturating the air waves with enough noise to interfere with satellite transmission. While no clear data exists, many suspect that this noise also causes significant physical harm, with reports of pregnant women aborting their pregnancies as far as five months when the hearts of their unborn babies do not develop properly.

In Heart Dish, Morvarid creates surreal reconstructions of Tehran’s rooftops through photography and collage to explore this concept of mass destruction through mass consumption. Each work is composed of coloured satellite dishes arranged in Iranian geometric patterns, set against the metallic rooftop textures found in Tehran. The artist’s organized compositions, reminiscent of aerial photography and harmlessly pretty images at first glance, reveal on closer inspection a real heart placed in each dish, bringing to the surface the invisible process of relentless damage and decay.

Morvarid K. was born in 1982 in Tehran, Iran. She studied at the École des Baux Arts in Bordeaux, France, and has exhibited in India, Australia, France and Singapore. This is her first solo exhibition in South East Asia. She lives in Tehran and Paris.

Image: © Morvarid K., Yavuz Fine Art