Mona Radziabari

The works presented in the Galerie Michael Sturm are projects that emerged from 2009 onwards. These projects can be divided into two categories. First, works that were created when Radziabari lived in Iran (until 2014) and the works that were created after leaving Iran (2016 to today).

The former works deal with the political and social situation of those years in Iran, while the latter works, which are created in Europe, focus more on the relationship between artists and objects.
Apart from the concept of each project, the commonality of these works is that Radziabari has been working on the idea of ​​recycling materials in each project since 2009. In the first phase, she recycled different boxes (shoebox, cigarette boxes, tea box …) while using the character of these handmade boxes to give the photos a surreal effect. In another project during the same period, she used the newspapers as the basis for her pictures, believing that the newspapers that do not publish the real news are not worth reading, so she recycled them and used them as the base material for painting.

In 2016 she started a project that collects used toys or objects and cuts and reassembles them into different shapes to create a memorial to the lost dreams.
In “I’m Listening to You”, she started creating various shapes by turning over or cutting the bills, paper notes, or paper materials while listening and talking to people in different places like a bar or a restaurant, and made small sculptures and photographed it as a single object floating against a black background.
“4x4x100”, which started in 2017, is an ongoing project based on the concept of criticism of the art scene, art festivals, and art fairs, where a lot of materials are used in the production of works of art and then end up in bins, it also relates kind of to the ‘Art Povera’ (poor art) movement that took place in Italy between the 60s and 70s.
The idea is to create a work of art based on making a unit and repeating the least different materials and sizes.