Yasi Alipour: The Pleasure of Futile Cycles
Curated by Maryam Ghoreishi in collaboration with Asia Contemporary Art Forum (ACAF)
Opening Reception: Friday, April 1st, 5-8pm
Walkthrough, 7pm, Yasi Alipour, Maryam Ghoreishi, and Leeza Ahmady
On view from March 29th to April 23rd
Twelve Gates Arts is pleased to present The Pleasure of Futile Cycles, a solo exhibition by the artist, writer, and educator, Yasi Alipour, curated by Maryam Ghoreishi in collaboration with the acclaimed New York platform Asia Contemporary Art Forum (ACAF). As the first association between the two Iranian born Brooklyn based art professionals, Alipour and Ghoreishi, The Pleasure of Futile Cycles is also the premier of ACAF’s 2022 Talking Peers program envisioned by ACAF board directors, curators Leeza Ahmady, Megha Ralapati, and Christopher Ho to prompt collaborations between Asia and Asia diaspora artists, curators and educators. It aims to activate, empower, and renew professional networks building, artistic connections, and expansive peer-to-peer mentorship structures.
The Pleasure of Futile Cycles features recent and new tactile works by Yasi Alipour made on a variety of papers merely through the artist’s act of folding and unfolding paper, or its combination with the cyanotype process. The ad infinitum performance of folding, which Alipour refers to as an infinite choreography on each sheet of paper, evokes rituals as repeated action, rooted in Yasi’s childhood. Integrating this habit and love for folding with her curiosity about math, numbers, and theories around paradoxes such as Zeno’s Paradox, Alipour explores the relationship between the binary logics of paradox theories and the infinite possibilities of dividing a 2D surface into different fractions.
Public Programs:
Friday April 1st, 5-8pm: Opening Reception and Walkthrough: an introduction tour to the show with Yasi Alipour, Maryam Ghoreishi and Leeza Ahmady.
Saturday, April 23th, Performative Workshop: Finding Silence, Echo, And Sounds in Traces: A Breath/Tactile (Folding)/Vocalizing with Yasi Alipour and Julia Santoli, a multimedia artist, musician, and composer. In this interactive workshop, audiences are encouraged to join Yasi and Julia. Through a collective experience of folding papers accompanied with vocals and soundart, an immersive environment will be created.
Bios:
Yasi Alipour is an Iranian artist/writer based in Brooklyn. Her tactile works on paper uses folding to explore mathematics as a language, with all the historical, social, political, mortal, and embodied ramifications any language holds.. Alipour currently lives in Brooklyn and wonders about paper, politics, and performance, probing story telling to parse social interruption and unstable histories. She is a recipient of Sharpe Walentas Studio Program Award (2019/2021), Rema Hort Foundation Emerging Artist Nominee (2018/2019), and the Triple Canopy Publication Intensive (2018). Her work has been exhibited in the United States and internationally, spaces including the Geary Contemporary (2021), Secca (2020), Venice Biennale (2019, IT), Hercules Program (2019, NY), 17 Essex (2019, NY), Limiditi-Temporary Art Project (2018, MR), Practice (2018, NY), Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina (2018, SR), Art in Odd Places (2017, NY), and PPOW (2017, NY). Her writing has appeared at the Brooklyn Rail, Spot Magazine, Asia Contemporary Art Week, Photograph Magazine, Volume One/Triple Canopy, and the Dear Dave. Her recent featured interviews include Julie Mehretu, Dorothea Rockburne, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Okwui Okpokwasili, Sanford Biggers, Yto Barrada, Hans Haacke, Mark Dion, Aliza Nisenbaum, Jane Benson, and Kevin Beasley. Alipour holds an MFA from Columbia University and is a Faculty at Columbia University, Parsons, and SVA.
Born in Iran, Maryam Ghoreishi is an artist, and an independent curator based in Brooklyn, currently also working as Program Manager at Residency Unlimited. She received her B.F.A and M.F.A in Iran and her M.A in Visual Arts Administration from New York University. Most recently Ghoreishi curated Out of Sight, Beyond Touch, at the Center for Book Arts, New York, (2021), which was featured in Hyperallergic and Art at a Time Like This online platform. Other curated shows include MAPPING OUT A FIELD, Zanbeel Art, Los Angeles (2020), and Who Really Cares, Cathouse Proper, Brooklyn (2019). As the Curatorial Fellow at Asia Contemporary Art Week (ACAW), she contributed to Open Studios in New York (2018) and FIELD MEETING Take 6: Thinking Collections forum and pop-up exhibitions at Alserkal Avenue in Dubai (2019). She is a committee member for The Other Art fair, Brooklyn, 2022.
