Scripted selves: Sutures of signs and symbols

Iran-based Zagra Yazdani is currently exhibiting her solo show ‘Scripted Selves: Sutures of Signs and Symbols’ and will be on display till February 29 at Gallery LATITUDE 28.

Under the orchestrated settings of the private spaces, the photographic works by Zahra Yazdani in the exhibition probes the human body through the effect of distortion and layers.

The asymmetry reimagines the points of location and registration of the dominant scripts to let the human body have its agency. The curatorial approach takes into account the scale of the photographs in order to cajole the viewer to pause and ponder: remap the body as through the eye of an active assimilator and associate.

To break the monotony of the space, an eclectic visual appeal anchored by the encases and organic drapes, accentuates a porous experience to see the set of photographs in its entirety and individually. The curatorial approach strategically attempts to divide the space through drapes – evoking a psychological bifurcation or an in-between space – synonymous with the traces of lamina of a body. Towards this end, the exhibition succinctly takes references from a book produced by the artist. Yet is attentive to avoid a similar iteration through the display.

The body permeable to human touch anchors its corporeal existence, not far to implicit its emblematic value. The dichotomies – mortal/ divine, essentialism/abstract, pure/profane and deceit /probity – scripted onto the body make it a wealthy repository worth curiosity.

Plato in the treatise ‘Forms’ sees man as split into a mortal body and an eternal Soul. Later, René Descartes’ ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’ reformulated this mysticism in the modern form – as a tension between body and mind. Sifting through the pages of human history and human nature, the triad – theologists, philosophers and cultural practitioners – have read the body as an inquiry into signs of heightened morality, elevated aesthetic capacity and linguistic sophistication. To embrace the body, as an epitome of nuanced rawness and complexities is what the photographer Zahra Yazdani attempts in her photography practice, which is rooted in the analogue world.

The finesse of skin and contortion, when combined, gesture at the political reality of the body and Yazdani’s representation of its vulnerability and, paradoxically, its inherent invincibility. To reach to this point, Yazdani transmutes private space into an orchestrated setting.

When: 11am – 7pm, Ongoing till February 29

Where: Gallery LATITUDE 28, F – 208, F/F, Lado Sarai