A To Stay | Desire Moheb-Zandi

FOLD is pleased to present A Way To Stay a solo show by Desire Moheb-Zandi, her first with the gallery.

Desire Moheb-Zandi integrates personal history and cultural identity in her large-scale, sculptural tapestries. Drawing from memories of her childhood in Turkey, where she passed hours watching her grandmother weave, Moheb-Zandi meshes traditional techniques with modern motifs and media. In addition to including rubber tubing, soft sculpture and synthetic netting in her work, Moheb-Zandi fashions the loom as a sort of analogue computer, where the code is her pattern, and her manipulation of the pattern creates optical resonance and movement. The diversity of material and fabrication techniques that Moheb-Zandi uses function on formal and conceptual levels; her work is visually dynamic and elegant, and it serves as a record of the artist’s life and journeys.

“Weaving is a form of digital technology. It operates on a binary code just like a computer, using warp and weft threads instead of ones and zeros. Like a digital image, a textile’s pattern or pictorial design comprises a matrix of encoded data written specifically for computation by a loom—a type of computer processor. A textile’s physical form and visual elements are the result of a certain combination of threads moving over and under each other at right angles, sometimes intersecting along multiple planes in space.” *

Moheb-Zandi approaches the loom as a starting point, using traditional hand-weaving patterns to begin writing code for making textile and creating rhythmic patterns. Although this process gravitates to the “feel” of computing and the look of its output (with shifted proportions and remixed patterns) the finished objects often have the aesthetic of algorithmic, hypnotic landscapes.

In some of her work Moheb-Zandi uses spray-paint on the surface of the textile, creating a new layer of pattern that responds to the underlying weaving. Here the woven textile almost becomes a support for spray paintings, exploring the relationship between the underlying textile and the painted surface. In other work there are objects woven into and across the exterior, like organic takeovers of the digital landscapes, where bulbous forms and protrusions rest on and break up the image and create a sculptural surface.

Moheb-Zandi sees her work as a synergistic space for experimentation and discovery, inviting the viewer to consider the interconnectivity of weaving, painting and sculpture while challenging traditional hierarchies of fine art and craft; to view the binary process of weaving in a new, non- binary way.

Desire Moheb -Zandi, b.1990 Berlin, Germany. Parsons School of Design New York, NY (2013). Exhibitions include: The Sowers curated by Anissa Touati and Nathalie Guiot, Fondation Thalie, Brussels (current Sept 8-Nov 2021), ‘Au fil du temps’, curated by Parcours Saint- Germain, Phillips Paris, (2021), ‘Fields of Reflections’, solo, Superzoom, Paris, (2021), ‘Faraway Nearer’, solo, The Newsstand Project, Los Angeles, CA (2019), A common Thread: curated by Ashanti McGee, Barrick Museum of Art, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA (2021).Residencies include: Poush Manifesto, Paris, France (September 2020-ongoing), SUPERZOOM residency, Ardèche, France (April – May 2021). CobxPlop Residency, London, UK (August-September 2021).

* Dr Sarah Mills – Painted Threads