Maryam Taghavi / A form to be possessed by (Chicago)
Sigils are an arrangement of numbers and letters in occult practices. These linguistic forms operate outside the ordinary systems of meaning-making of language, and promise to summon the metaphysical powers.The sigil used in this installation is borrowed from Premodern Islamic occult practices, and claims to bring the body to the point of flight.
In other words, these forms can be seen as placeholders that sustain, and potentially perform our dreams and desires.
With this in mind, I enter Lorranie Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun, and ask, what belief system can withstand the material brutality of our circumstances before the dream “dr[ies] up like a raisin in the sun?”*
(What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Langston Hughes, 1951)
BIO: Maryam Taghavi is an artist and educator residing in Chicago. She is a faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is the artist in residency at the Chicago Artists Coalition’s BOLT program. Her work is grounded on the study of forms of language, beyond the ordinary meaning making systems. She reads language as a multisensory experience, and situates her work across disciplines of photography, installation, video, publication, drawing, and performance. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as LAXART, Queens Museum, Exterressa Museum, Chicago Cultural Center, Sullivan Galleries, EXPO, Driehaus Museum, and Sazmanab Gallery among others. She is the recipient of numerous grants from Canada Council for the Art, New Artist Society and Illinois Arts Council Agency.
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