Zeynab Movahed: Unstable Conditions

April 5 - 18, 2022 | Opening Reception April 5, 4 - 8 PM

Roya Khadjavi Projects and Massoud Nader are delighted to present “Unstable Conditions”, a solo exhibition by Iranian-born artist Zeynab Movahed. Delicately layered with a clever combination of reflections and shadows, highlights and dark spots, this body of works is made of intertwined and sometimes broken shapes, a parallel to the actual world of the artist herself and women like her. According to the artist, it depicts “an unstable visual world in which everything is restless and continuously changing”. The mercurial aspect of life in Iran with its “continuous uncertainties is the essence of our major instability, and the core of our existence” says Movahed. “Live. Exist or be Absent”.

Born in Tehran-Iran in 1981, Zeynab Movahed holds a BA and MFA in painting from Tehran’s Art and Architectural Azad University. She has been painting professionally since 1999, has held ten solo exhibitions, and has participated in more than fifty group exhibitions, biennials, and art fairs in Iran and internationally. Her paintings focus on the challenges contemporary Iranian women face in their daily lives, sometimes problematic due to the gender imbalance in the Muslim world, and at other times euphoric because of the strength and resistance of these same women. Through her many artistic periods, Movahed has purposefully, continuously, and without judgement portrayed snapshots and details of the often-neglected feminine life. In her new body of work “unstable conditions”, she has chosen to portray a more visible woman going about her social life away from the privacy of her home.

Roya Khadjavi is an independent curator and cultural producer based in New York. She has largely focused on the work of young Iranian artists working both in Iran and beyond its borders, seeking not only to support their artistic endeavors but to also facilitate awareness and cultural dialogue between artistic communities. Since 2008, she has actively led exhibition committee efforts around the art of the Middle East for institutions including the Guggenheim Museum and the Asia Society, where she sat on the steering committee of the critically acclaimed exhibit Iran Modern (2013). Khadjavi co-founded the Institute of International Education’s Iran Opportunities Fund and served as president of the board of New York based non-profit Art in General. For her pioneering efforts to advance, support, and promote international education, she has been honored with the Women’s Global Leadership Award by the Institute of International Education and an Order of Academic Palms (Chevalier dans L’Ordre des Palmes Académiques) by the French Minister of Education.