In order to have an insight into a certain culture one should carefully look at banal aspects of daily life, which subtly express the real national costumes and beliefs.

For the Liste Art Fair 2015, Green Art Gallery presented a solo project by emerging Iranian artist Nazgol Ansarinia. By dissecting and recasting everyday objects and practices, the Islamic artist investigates the intricacies and hidden relationships that define the contemporary Iranian experience. Born and raised in Tehran, she studied communication and fine arts in UK and USA before coming back to her native Country. Her work is characterized by an emphasis on research and analysis of cultural differences and similarities, critically revealing the parallel tension between the individuals’ private and public dimension like in the Private Assortment series, 2011-2013. Traditional objects and common features of Iranian life gain symbolic value and serve as metaphors for socio- economic means and status in Iran. Interested in the routinized and the banal, she visually investigates various social structures and closely examines all these interactions before making them her own through a process of deconstruction and reconstruction. For the Mendings series, 2010, she dissected and reassembled common items such as chairs, carpets and mirrors. While the mended objects maintained their symmetry and functionality, their new form and the seam where they had been attached created an inconvenience and an interruption in daily life, revealing something hidden, forgotten or even new about the familiar objects. Ansarinia uses systems or imposed structures to rearrange the elements she takes apart; this process often creates a sense of abstraction in her works, extremely visible in her drawings and collages. Despite the highly conceptual approach to art, Ansarinia’s pieces always maintain a strong engagement with physicality and materiality as well as with the political sphere. Ultimately the artist aims to explore how local iterations of a culture might act as a fulcrum for the hopes and fears of people living in an increasingly, albeit asymmetrically, globalized world.