Aleph, 2009

exhibition history —> Iran via Video Current, Thomas Erben Gallery, NY, Dec 2011. AGH World Film festival, Hamilton 2010. Gallery1313, Toronto February 2009. Limited Access II, Tehran October 2009.

“Aleph, no. 1, is the unthinkable life-death, abstract principle of all that is and all that is not.” Carlo Suares,

 “Thinking a lot about Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953), I realized that one of the things it is about is minimizing the subject, indicating that the removal of one subject can allow for the appearance of another.” Vincent Katz 

 Aleph is the first letter of Hebrew, Arabic, and Farsi alphabet.  It is believed to be the symbol and spiritual root of all harmony, beginning of life and thought.  

 “Aleph” is an allusion to an abstract and dysfunctional alphabet, which never gets the chance to appear on paper, and is demolished from the very beginning of its birth. The performative act of erasing amplifies “Aleph” with a paradoxical characteristic of creation and destruction. There is mourning for the deceased (the artist’s cultural and artistic background), while at the same time there is delight for the newborn.

 In this piece of work I am destroying Aleph, my handwriting, my drawing, and my art in an attempt to recreate. My hand experiences a duality, living in a western culture. Although it is used to getting erased in a restricted political atmosphere in Iran, it exposes a self-defeating behavior; a dichotomy, when it writes right to left while at the same time it erases left to right. 

 Repeatedly erasing the pre-existing and making a path through the unknown, with an awareness of being under the gaze of the remains, I name it Aleph, the beginning and the end.

Sona Safaei-Sooreh