Azadeh Ghotbi

I experienced revolution, loss, exile, and the idiosyncrasies of feeling proud of one’s heritage yet stateless early in life. I left Iran at an age when one is too young to make life-changing decisions yet old enough to suffer their consequences. I left behind everything I knew, cared for, and took for granted. The “present” and the beautiful prospect its future held were wiped forever at that very moment.

Every day that goes by I’m fully aware that a diminishing proportion of my life has been spent in my country of birth yet on some intangible level the feeling of kinship to it remains strong. The passing of time has only made me further appreciate and cherish the importance of history, roots and cultural ties. Diaspora, statelessness, transience, lack of continuity are my “normal”. However, I have found that such experience can bear unexpected gifts of strength, adaptability, empathy, and a heightened sense of observation. The cumulative effect of all this imparts and reflects itself upon my work.

Azadeh’s work has been exhibited in Amsterdam, Basel, Cairo, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris and Tehran.

I am attracted to lives that are strongly marked by connections, encounters and separation. Each painting in the CROSSROADS series is composed of multiple layers of colored lines some barely visible, others dominant, some continuous, others abruptly cut off; they represent people and lives that intersect,
connect, enrich each other or fade away.