Raha Rastifard
Sonny Sanjay Vadgama
evolving/dissolving
December 10, 2015 – January 31, 2016
AREA 52 is pleased to announce EVOLVING/DISSOLVING, the first exhibition at its premises in Nybrogatan 52, Stockholm. Sonny Sanjay Vadgama is a British artist living and working between Vienna, Berlin and London. Vadgama is deeply involved with the relationship between artwork and environment and the narratives that often flow through his work are influenced by science and politics. His most recent production has focused on photography and print in tandem with video. Vadgama was an artist in residence at the Girton College, University of Cambridge, and was the award winner of the “Exposure 2009” at the Parasol Unit in London. He has also shown works in public spaces in Germany, Ireland and the U.K. His works has included projections on the Reichstag, the New National Gallery in Berlin and on the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Raha Rastifard is an Iranian-German artist, who was born in Iran and lives and works in Stockholm. Her work ranges from photography to video, drawing, installation and printmaking. Trans-cultural, poetic and historical references are intertwined in her work and stem from largely autobiographical subject matters. Rastifard dilutes reality, dreams and fantasy inscribed on paper. Through symbols of the heritage of her native country – such as calligraphy and the Sufi dress – Rastifard digresses from the autobiographical nature of such inscription. Rastifard was a finalist of the “Freedom to Create Prize”; she has shown work at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and had a solo show at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. EVOLVING/DISSOLVING includes the new works Story Written with Water by Rastifard and The Infinite Regress by Vadgama. These artists trace their own path in this common journey. Rastifard reflects on the meanings and patterns of the past in a contemporary practice. Vadgama incessantly undermines and successfully manages to collapse the border between chaos and order; evolving and dissolving, unveiling the Janus Face of human nature.
