Cut In Cut Out

Works by Nazafarin Lotfi & Shirin Mozaffari

Iranian artists, Mozaffari (MFA Photography and Film, Video, New Media) and Lotfi (MFA Painting and Drawing) have created a space for the interaction of still and moving images in their collaborative exhibition, Cut In Cut Out. Featuring individual works by both artists and a collaborative piece designed for the LG Space, Cut In Cut Out will be accompanied by a round table discussion among Chicago-based Iranian artists organized by the artists. Mozaffari’s video work emphasizes narrative content and attempts to reveal how that content shifts when re-contextualized. Her three-channel video, Namesake (2009), is an animation of appropriated graphics from Persian miniature paintings re-positioned within a contemporary feminist context that tells the story of a family tragedy from three different points of view. Lotfi is also concerned with the essential qualities of narrative. Her tactile “drawings with scissors” are composed of reductive shapes influenced by Farsi calligraphy and collage, emphasizing the duration and organic qualities of her process. Often, her works re-use the detritus from previous projects, rendering each piece part of a longer chain of events.