Sepideh Dashti graduated from Waterloo with a major in Fine Arts Studio Practice and a minor in Digital Arts Communication, and then went on to complete her Masters degree at Western University in 2020. Her exhbition, Counterpoint, is part of the new program at the Ruffin Gallery, University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA, to exhibit emerging artists.
Counterpoint, includes recent and new photography, textile, and video installation work by Sepideh Dashti. Using personal and marginalized methods of research, she performs her bodily material, stitching her hair and blurring the boundaries between languages, to challenge ideas of femininity and domesticity and depict the experience of her diaspora.
Not all diasporas are the same. Not all female experiences of oppression are the same. Dashti’s experience as an Iranian diasporic woman is fragmented along ethnic, religious, social, political, and class lines. These fragments pose challenges to her attempts to bind with others and find solidarity based in multiculturalism and ethnicity. Dashti establishes her body as an integral material in her art practices to make the explanation of her experiences and challenges possible. She seeks to claim her body across multiple media to question her identity with regard to the deplorable conditions of history, language, and culture existing between different spaces she has occupied.
The show opens on January 24 and runs until February 24. There is an artist talk with Sepideh next Tuesday, January 25 at 6:30 PM via Zoom. She will also be doing a performance on Friday, January 28 at 12:00 PM that will be livestreamed on Instagram. The links are available on the Gallery website.