TABARI ARTSPACE Dubai presents Mirror Garden, an exhibition of works by Samira Alikhanzadeh Born in Iran, 1967, Samira Alikhanzadeh studied painting as an undergraduate at Azad University and then completed her Masters in Fine Art. Her early work heavily featured windows, focusing on the effects of light movements in interior settings when filtered through glass. Not long ago, a serendipitous discovery of old family photographs led to a shift of focus and recent pieces primarily feature individuals - particularly women and children - as her main subject matter. Alikhanzadeh’s images are printed digitally on wooden boards and subsequently painted over with acrylic. A key element of the current series is the omnipresence of mirror fragments. This medium playfully invites viewers to place themselves within the work and thus encourages them to ponder their own identity, existence, mortality and gender.

 

Mirror Garden I place a mirror against your mirror To make eternity out of you From the book “Mirror Garden” by Ahmad Shamlou “I’m not tired of strolling in the Garden of Mirrors yet. I still crave to find an excuse to place a mirror in front of you and to invite you into the world of my works. It doesn’t matter; the excuse can be my own image or an image of a little girl with a back ground of a beautifully designed and patterned carpet; a Persian painting from centuries ago or a complete and frank abstraction of our world of today and yesterdays. In any case, I can, we can travel through the mirrors into another world and to have a different experience of the “ Time Passing“; an obsession I feel won’t be leaving me any time soon.”