Made Lands

Exhibition by Minoosh Zomorodinia

Exhibition: May 1st – June 26th, 1-5pm on Saturdays

Local Language: 477 25th Street, Oakland CA 94612

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Deeply informed by her cultural background, religion, and politics, Zomorodinia’s work investigates the concept of self, particularly how self relates to the environment. Borrowing from ritual and nature, sometimes infusing humor, she integrates contradictory concepts into pieces that visualize struggles of self. Recently she employed walking as a catalyst for her sculptures, which reference nomadic lifestyles, as well as colonialism. These subjects interest her due to the rising costs of housing in the Bay Area, and displacement as an immigrant from Iran. Zomorodinia records the routes of her walks with a mapping application to transform the resulting graphics into three dimensional objects. She uses photography and video to document distinct moments of time spent within each space, and to reflect her emotional, psychological, and subconscious experiences inspired by nature. She envisions these forms as representations of virtual space where living takes place in her mind.

RESIDENCY WORK ON EXHIBIT

In this new series, My Ziggurat, Zomorodinia re-forms and reshapes the borders, while referencing historical monuments and the memory from the spaces and land in the digital age. She turns these routes into monumental forms based on the outline of her paths to represent topography in the digital age. The abstracted natural imagery is printed on leftover layers with the texture from the actual location. The printed images transform perceptions of the natural environment in the new media age. She is interested in how technology forms memory through digital archiving, transforming invisible routes that exist as a memory into actual objects in abstract form, is there any limitation? How will the history of a place exist in the future?

ARTIST’S BIO

Minoosh Zomorodinia is an Iranian-born interdisciplinary artist who makes visible the emotional and psychological reflections of her mind’s eye inspired by nature. She employs walking as a catalyst to reference the power of technology as a colonial structure while negotiating boundaries of lands. Zomorodinia earned her MFA in new genres from the San Francisco Art Institute, and holds a Masters degree in Graphic Design and BA in Photography from Azad University in Tehran. She currently lives and works in the Bay Area.

Local Language is an Art, Design, and Fabrication studio providing curated art collections for commercial properties across the globe. The Artist in Residence program offers space, time, and facilities for artists in a multitude of disciplines to explore creative pursuits and utilize technology to further their own art practice. We are a working art manufacturer. Made in the Garage District, Oakland California.

Open to the public Saturdays between 1-5pm, or by appointment.