List of Persian/Iranian Events for 2009-04-11

The Power of Women and Words: Art Exhibit, Film and Writing Workshop
Saturday, April 11
Berkeley City College Auditorium
(One block from Downtown Berkeley Bart Station)
2050 Center Street
Berkeley, CA 94704
Doors Open - 12:30 p.m.
Film - 1:00 p.m.
Writing Workshop - 3:00 p.m.
Refreshments provided!
Sliding scale: $5 - $15
Art Exhibit: Art of women facing and overcoming violence by local and international artists.
Film Showing: "What I Want My Words To Do To You".
Writing Workshop:
Workshop lead by BCC writing teachers
Sharon Coleman and Robyn Brooks
Event benefiting work on the ground to stop violence against women.
For more information, email svaw.norcal@gmail.com

SATURDAY

WHEN: SATURDAY, APRIL 11th , 2:00PM

WHERE: Persian Center

2029 Durant Ave

Berkeley, CA





ISAA is honored and privileged to bring Mr. Pezhham Akhavass, one of the most talented tombak and daf players of today, to our campus to speak about the progress of rhythm and technique of daf and tombak (two traditional Persian instruments.) Mr. Akhavass also made a guest performance with Tehranosaurus at the conference over the weekend.



From 2001 Pezhham began working professionally with the renowned vocalist, Shahram Nazeri. He has performed in many notable music festivals world-wide and toured extensively in Iran and Europe including prestigious venues such as: Théâtre de la Ville and Due soley in France (Paris), FEZ festival in Morocco, Sodran theatre in Sweden, Austria, Italy, Australia, Finland ,Ö..etc. His unique approach to Rhythm and style of playing, considers him as one of the distinguished and capable Tombak players of his generation.



If you haven’t heard his music, we encourage ALL of you to hear a sample of it to become familiar with his work and to come this SATURDAY to see it live!



To read more about Mr. Akhavass and to hear samples of his music please go to: http://www.myspace.com/pezhhamakhavass





**Please note that this lecture will be in Persian.



Persian tea and sweets will be provided.

For Immediate Release


Exhibition: Vahid Sharifian
My Father is a Democrat and through his chimney there are always hearts flying to the sky

With a presentation of work by Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar in the Project Room

Dates: April 11 – May 16, 2009
Reception: Saturday April 11, 2009 from 6 to 8pm


Khastoo Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of work by Tehran based artist Vahid Sharifian. The gallery showroom will present a large photographic installation by the Iranian artist Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar. This will be the first time either artist has exhibited in the United States.

Andy Warhol once famously declared that to know his work, one had only to look at the surfaces. Whether that infers the difficulties of poetic expression in an age of celebrity obsessed mass media, the privileging of the superficial as defense mechanism, or simply a mirrored screen of projection that reflects these ideas back onto the hungry-eyed consumer, Warholian aesthetics of surface continue to penetrate the strategies of contemporary production. In his latest body of work, Sharifian recontextualizes images of Sophia Loren culled from an out-of-print 1972 cookbook: In the Kitchen with Love. The photographs are digitally printed on holographic paper, and surround an oversize birdcage sculpture that holds plastic fruit. As with his Western counterparts, the surfaces are never just one thing (a mimicry of the hologram where the reconstructed depth in painterly illusionism confronts the Baudrillardian internalized projection) and certainly transcend Pop Art’s obsession with glamour and capitalism to include more surreal collective fantasies. Sharifian’s work touches on themes as wide-ranging as public personality, individual identity, sex and food, queer culture, and the recent political history of the artist’s home country.

Surface logic is given a more ascetic treatment in Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar’s installation of 64 photographic postcards of flowers, shot by the artist in his studio and captioned according to plant specie, location and date. Beyond the monastic markings of time and space (the photographs were taken over 64 consecutive days with the flowers bought at the same shop near the artist’s studio) or the topographical exploration of beauty and allegory, Bakhshi Moakhar’s flowers remind us of the uneasy and precarious advertising of Iran to the outside world. What may appear complete or valuable on the surface belies the complex interpretation deserved of the realities just beyond.

Vahid Sharifian and Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar are both Iranian artists living and working in Tehran. Currently the artists are included in the exhibition “Raad o Bargh” at Thaddeus Ropac Gallery, Paris. Sharifian has previously exhibited at the ICA, London, and for several years served on the board of the progressive visual arts journal Tandis as writer and editor. Bakhshi Moakhar has exhibited work at the Barbican Centre, London, Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg, and Arario Gallery, Beijing.

Amir Aram's Poster for his concert. The concert is at
> April 11th in Down Town San Jose. The doors open
> at 7:00 PM, and the concert starts at 8:00.
>
>
>
> The tickets are on sale in Most Persian Markets for $35,
> and the VIP tickets must be purchased by me $50. Please
> contact me for more details, or you may have further
> questions.>
>