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Taravat Talepasand
“To create art, it is imperative for me to be vulnerable. Torment and twist – extract the truth from issues
with which I need to deal. However, I believe that art has to possess an element of courage in order to
provoke change – socially, intellectually, and morally, most notable, in a world where ideas of culture,
political, and intellectual activities are evolving, but not without conflicts affecting generations to come.”!
-Taravat Talepasand
Taravat Talepasand is Iranian American, born 1979 in Oregon, as her parents left Persia a few months
before the Iranian Revolution which put in power Khomeini. She lives and works in San Francisco.
She holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of
Design, studied Persian Miniature painting in Iran, and was the recipient of the prestigious Richard C.
Diebenkorn Fellowship in 2010.
Her work is included several US Museums, such as the Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco; the
Orange County Museum of Art in Orange County, California; and the de Young Museum in San
Francisco.
As an Iranian woman living in America, Talepasand uses the work to explore how women navigate the
myriad boundaries between East and West. Women’s bodies become surfaces imprinted with the
uncertainties left by social and political upheaval, using the human figure as a treacherous place between
narrative and introspection. Her work reflects on the impossibility of reconciling words, images, and
objects as subjects, developing a dialogue between artist and viewer questioning the contortions of
cultural associations and how they cross boundaries, what is tolerable and taboo, and the fine line
between what is real and imagined. In the post-Internet world, Talepasand reminds us how “All eras seem
to exist at once” and then challenges familiar perceptions, paradigms, cognitive processes, and their
associated relationships, hopefully leaving the viewer pondering these ever-conflicting messages.
Talepasand considers her work as a reaction against the “Rationalism” of hope and disappointment of
Iran and the Arab Spring, touching on issues of freedom, dignity, and social justice.
Our ARCO project with Taravat Talepasand will consist of a selection of large scale egg tempera
paintings, created in the technique similar to Persian Miniature painting, thus highly detailed, as well as
several exquisite drawings, and a large scale sculpture/painting, a painted 1977 Mercedes 230 Coupé.
beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary
ARCO Madrid 2016 Stand 9D11
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beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary
ARCO Madrid 2016 Stand 9D11
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Dar Bast (Closed Door)
2015
enamel on 1977 Mercedes Benz 230C
ca. 139,5 H by 464 by 178,6 cm (ca. 55 H by 183 by 70.5 in.)
“Mirror-tinted windows and hand painted poetic narrative of men, oil, opium, and censored women. This Benz transforms
and reinterprets an Iranian taxi service for women only. A transportation where women can be private during their journey
to hide themselves from the shameful world of men.”
- Taravat Talepasand
beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary
ARCO Madrid 2016 Stand 9D11
!27
Andarooni Birooni (Insider Outsider)
2015
egg tempera and gold leaf on linen
ca. 112 by 76 cm (ca. 44 by 30 in.)
beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary
ARCO Madrid 2016 Stand 9D11
!28
Westoxicated
2015
egg tempera and gold leaf on linen
ca. 168 by 92 cm (ca. 66 by 36 in.)
beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary
ARCO Madrid 2016 Stand 9D11
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Terror’s Advocate
2011
graphite and pigment on paper
ca. 102 by 76 cm (40 by 30 in.)
beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary
ARCO Madrid 2016 Stand 9D11
!30
Andarooni, Birooni, Lies and Man
(Insider, Outsider, Lies and Man)
2011
egg tempera on linen
ca. 81 by 66 cm (ca. 32 by 26 in.)
beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary
ARCO Madrid 2016 Stand 9D11
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Hafez, September 9, 1978
2009
graphite on paper
ca. 102 by 76 cm (40 by 30 in.)
beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary
ARCO Madrid 2016 Stand 9D11
!32
A modestly dressed woman is a pearl in its shell
2008
graphite on paper
ca. 102 by 76 cm (40 by 30 in.)
beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary
ARCO Madrid 2016 Stand 9D11
!33
Welcome jihad
2007
egg tempera and gold leaf on linen
ca. 56 by 43 cm (ca. 22 by 17 in.)
beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary
ARCO Madrid 2016 Stand 9D11
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