"Lace of Stars" a solo show by Fariba Salma Alam at Shrine Empire Gallery, 7, Friends Colony (West) > 13th December 2013 to 11th January 2014

Time : 
13th December : 6:00 pm onwards - Opening Preview
14th December to 11th January : 11:00 am - 7:00 pm - Exhibition on View

Entry : Free

Place : Shrine Empire Gallery, 7, Friends Colony (West), New Delhi - 110 065

Venue Info : www.shrineempiregallery.com | Nearest Metro Station - 'Kalkaji Mandir(Violet Line)'

Event Description : Shrine Empire presents 'Lace of Stars' a solo show by Fariba Salma Alam. 

Lace of Stars is a solo exhibition by Fariba Salma Alam, incorporating photography, projection mapping, textile and tile installation. A central theme to the works is a fractured female body capable of corporeal ascension, and an interplay between cast shadow, silhouette, foreground and space. Religious and secular allegories—with themes of migration, travel and fantasy— also inhabit Alam’s narrative influences. The name Lace of Stars refers to a constellation and a fantastical backdrop, reminiscent of the Islamic parable The Night Journey or Mir'aj, in which the prophet Mohammed takes a mystical voyage from Mecca to Jerusalem riding a creature half-angel, half-horse. 

Alam’s visual influences include biological patterns, mathematical diagrams, pixels and architectural blueprints. Imbued with feminist scholarship of woman as discourse rather than real human—the ambivalent or suspended female form—Alam juxtaposes the silhouetted, soft female body against cold, discordant geometrical patterns. The symmetry of Islamic architecture and reductive lattice motifs provide a formal reference point for Lace of Stars, anchoring Alam’s process and visual language.

In the projection installation Bare Branches, geometric abstractions of female soldiers and animal horns, animating hidden, fighting, latent forces, emerge from a grainy silhouette. Alam plays on the notion of flight and nature’s tenuous balance in A Million Goodbyes. Diaphanous textile printed with a black and white image of a heron perched on branches is installed as suspended handkerchiefs. The same heron appears in the ceramic tile piece Lacuna-- tiles that trail into a wall corner, like architectural and abstracted lines referring to interrupted geometries.

Bio:
Fariba S. Alam is a visual artist who lives and works in New York. She received her B.A. from Columbia University (1998) and is the recipient of a photography Fulbright fellowship (1998/1999.) She earned her M.A. from New York University (2004) and was selected for Aljira EMERGE (2008.) Her work has been exhibited at The Queens Museum, MOCADA/Museum of African Art, MOCA/Shanghai among others; collections include the Burger Collection and Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio.

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