IN PERSON

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Join us off-site for a conversation with Iranian-American artist Foroozan Shirghani and Fowler Museum director of education and interpretation Amy Landau at ADVOCARTSY, a leading platform specializing in Iranian contemporary art located in West Hollywood. The talk will begin at 3 pm, with an ongoing reception from 2–5 pm. The artist will discuss a series of works about alienation, catalyzed by experiences of her immigration to the U.S. in 2015. ADVOCARTSY is located at 434 N. La Cienega Blvd, West Hollywood, CA, 90048. 

Foroozan Shirghani (b. 1981, Shirvan, Iran), is a multidisciplinary artist who received her BFA from Tehran Azad Art University in 2004 and her MFA from Alzahra University in 2008. She served as a lecturer and art instructor at the Shahr-e Rey Azad University and Shariati Technical College in Tehran in 2008–15. Shirghani’s creations span media, including painting, drawing, ceramic sculpture, abstract video, and textiles. Her work has been shown in over 60 exhibitions worldwide and featured in numerous publications. She has been living and working in Los Angeles since 2015. Shirghani’s art stems from her personal experiences, and focuses on psychological and socio-political issues, especially identity boundaries. She explores universal themes of displacement, alienation, fragility, vulnerability, loss, suffering, and pressure exerted on the human body by these forces. She addresses these life-altering situations through fragmentation, deformity, and destruction of her subjects and media. In her work, objects have a symbolic nature and express social behaviors.

Amy Landau is director of education and interpretation at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. Previously, she has served as director of curatorial affairs and curator of Islamic and South & Southeast Asian art at the Walters Art Museum (2009–18). In 2017, Landau was a fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership. She lectures and publishes on the arts of early modern Iran; her curatorial work has been generously funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. She received her PhD from the department of Islamic art and archaeology at University of Oxford.  

Related exhibition: Amir H. Fallah: The Fallacy of Borders

Fowler in the City: The Fowler collaborates with city partners to host off-site conversations, screenings, and workshops. 

Image credit: Foroozan Shirghani, In pursuit of light, 2021; acrylic and oil on canvas; courtesy of ADVOCARTSY