Friday November 17 * 630-830pm * Free with RSVP / small donations via cash/venmo encouraged at the event
Shab-e-Shehr: A Night of Gathering
Members of the SWANA diaspora living in the United States are reckoning with yet another crisis. We have spent over a month witnessing escalated genocide in Palestine, which has brought us all closer to our interconnected struggles across the continents, from Sudan, to the Congo, Armenia, Afghanistan, Haiti, and on. We in the Iranian and Kurdish diasporas have only just commemorated the one year mark of Jina Mahsa Amini’s murder at the hands of the Iranian government’s morality police, and the blaze of the Women, Life, Movement within and beyond Iran’s borders.
How do artists, within and outside of the diaspora, meet this moment? How do we find one another to build community? How can we as artists participate in radically imagining a future of freedom for all?
“Shab-e-shehr” translates from Farsi to “night of poetry,” and references informal gatherings like those hosted by my family to share and discuss poetry, stories, conversations, and music. In our Iranian home, gatherings took place in a living room, seats pushed into a circle against the walls so all could face each other, with offerings of food and drink as people shared stories, memories, jokes, songs, and poetry. This “Shab-e-shehr” invites Iranian and diasporic artists into the artistic home of Rhizome DC to share their work, and includes an open portion for anyone attending to share poetry, music, and thoughts on how to continue solidarity with the current revolution in Iran. At this critical moment in our history, these gatherings will offer a decentralized space for members of diasporic communities to find one another, share art and knowledge, and imagine shared futures together.
The first hour will consist of artist presentations, with the second hour opening the floor for all attendees to participate in a free discussion in conversation with the artists.
This series is made possible through the Wherewithal Grant by the Washington Project for the Arts.
Date: Friday, November 17, 2023
Time: 6:30-8:30 pm
Location: Rhizome DC, 6950 Maple St NW
Free with RSVP, donations accepted
PRESENTING ARTISTS:
Aida Ebrahimi, Mojdeh Rezaeipour, Peyman Allahvirdizadeh
Aida Ebrahimi is a multidisciplinary artist and art educator. Her creative process includes experimenting with art forms of photography, illustration, painting, ceramic sculpture, and calligraphy as a way to convey her own journey of existentialism, immigrant trauma, sexual trauma, and gender politics. Her work is a reflection of her family’s immigrant journey from East to West, and from art as functional to art as pure visual expression. Currently based in Washington D.C., Aida was born and raised in Tehran, Iran, and immigrated to Minnesota in 2010. She has exhibited her works in galleries in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Washington D.C. Aida’s photography has been featured in international magazines such as “Brenda” and “What’s Afghan Punk Rock Anyway?”. She is a recipient of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities fellowship.
Mojdeh Rezaeipour is an Iranian-born artist whose interdisciplinary practice bridges her varied backgrounds as an architect, storyteller, and community organizer. She has exhibited nationally and internationally in a wide range of venues, from DIY project spaces in Berlin to museums such as The Phillips Collection. Mojdeh is currently based in DC, where she is an Artist-in-Residence at Henry Luce III Center for the Arts & Religion.
Peyman Allahvirdizadeh was born 4000ft above the sea level in north west of Iran wearing a sailor’s hat and a tiny mustache. When he set off to travel the open road he neatly packed his heart, whimsy, darkness, names’ of family members, the human condition, solitude, and yearning for home in pickle jar, he added a little bit of jasmine at the end. Now even years later he carries the jar everywhere he goes. The label on the jar reads: poems.
COVID SAFETY:
Masks and rapid tests will be available at the event. Attendees are asked to test before the event. If taking place indoors, masks will be required, except when eating or drinking. This requirement asks all participants to respect our shared responsibility to protect the most vulnerable and at risk members of our community from infection. It acknowledges the severity of the current surge of Covid 19 with new variants, and the failure of our local and federal governments to take adequate measures to prevent the spread of infection.
NOTE FOR ATTENDEES:
While open to all, this event is meant to offer space to artists of Iranian and SWANA backgrounds with multi-ethnic identities and multi-racial backgrounds. The United States has historically silenced and erased the stories and experiences of non-white and immigrant peoples. It continually enacts policies and military interventions in our part of the world that directly harm and traumatize South-West Asian and North African peoples. Within Iran, nationalist policies actively oppress minority ethnic communities, including those of Kurdish, Armenian, Baluch, and East-African origins. We ask that attendees keep in mind the need to respect and honor the intention to give voice to the marginalized, and to allow BIPOC attendees, those of minority backgrounds, and those of queer identities to be given prioritization in our open discussion.