Mahnaz Seyed Ekhtiary: the tree of body

In the theoretical considerations of feminist movements of the 60s the body was defined as “border” between nature and culture, in fact, taking an historical distinction between the human and the world around him. In a frequently used access it can be argued that nature and culture and their relationship are the result of an invention.
The contemporary perspective leaves the two domains with boundaries blurred and uncertain (language and symbolism seem indeed phenomena that do not belong only to human culture). During the post-computational technology is no longer considered as opposed to nature, but its logical integration in a common aesthetic and epistemological investigation.
And even the very meaning of nature as subject and matter  at the same time in itself creates a new term such as “nature after nature” dissociating from an obsolete term, idealized and ideological. The constructions of Mahnaz Seyedekhtary young Iranian artist run along the ideal line dress-nature-space using a scheme that spontaneously interacts with heterogeneous materials. Among busts in painted wood, hugs drawn, hands clasped, decorations inspired by surrealist (so dear to the great Elsa Schiaparelli) stratified as body painting designs on creating a game with the environment that hosts them. The body becomes armor, hybrid boundary between nature and structure preserves traits of an archetype of “tailoring” with seams, ribbons and buttons. The wood evokes the warmth of home, of the fireplace, but also that bond with their “roots” that belongs to us.
Carved, decorated, shaped. Matched with delicate draping fabric constructed with the attention of a couturier. Dress, armor, sculpture are connected by strips, straps and branches with each other and with the exhibition space into a “natural” path, extensions of ideas that unite the different words of the same speech.

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