Art Taaalkssss: Vanessa Safavi

Of Iranian and Swiss descent Vanessa Safavi (born in Lausanne, lives and works between Berlin and Switzerland) conjures contrasting polarities of cultural concepts by appropriating their visual language by means of signs and materials. Lately, her work has increasingly focused on the body, while addressing conceptual systems of language as well as personal narratives. She explores and questions the notion of contemporary identity of the body in times of constant optimisation of technologies and its cultural impact in hyper-organised societies. According to Safavi, this phenomenon has resulted in a whole new conception of identity, which comes with complex, vulnerable and schizophrenic features. Her work mirrors the physical fragility of our bodies and aims at highlighting the poetry that emerges from them. At the Art Institute she presents her most recent film Velvet (2019), which offers an immersion in a small Indian company specialized in the manufacture of latex gloves.

Velvet, 2019, HD video (Color, sound), 12 min, original music by Ariel Garcia and Luc Müller, images by Xavier Ripolles and Vanessa Safavi, produced by Vanessa Safavi with the additional support of Fonds Culturel Fribourg

Solo exhibitions include Turns and Returned, The Breeder, Athens, 2018; The Cook and the Smoke Detector, ChertLüdde, Berlin, 2017; Medullla Plaza,Kunstverein Grafschaft, Bentheim 2016; Amygdala,The Breeder Playroom, Athens, 2015; cloud metal cities, Kunsthalle São Paulo 2014; Οne Torino, Castello di Rivoli, Turin 2013; After the Monument Comes the People, Kunsthalle Basel, 2012.
 
Group exhibitions include Hidden Bar, Art Basel, 2019; Objects like us, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, USA, 2018; Meaning can only grow out of intimacy (Limbs, Water, Nostalgia), Les Urbaines – 20th edition, Lausanne 2016; Inflected Objects # 2 Circulation – Mise en Séance, Frans Hals Museum | De Hallen Haarlem, Netherlands, 2016; The transparent tortoiseshell and the un-ripe umbrella, Glasgow Sculpture Studios, Glasgow, 2016.