The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) has added two important works to its collection: Claude Zervas’ sculpture Nooksack (2005) and Shirin Neshat’s video Tooba (2002).
Multimedia artist CLAUDE ZERVAS uses technology to abstract landscape in Nooksack, comprising 32 nine-inch fluorescent lights and hundreds of feet of cascading white wire. An expert in computers and digital technologies, Zervas uses their magic to transform the topography of the Nooksack River into a luminous drawing that appears to float above the ground. The composition of this sculpture is inspired by the topography and flow of the river as it winds towards Puget Sound. This work is part of a larger series that includes video and photography, and will be part of the upcoming exhibition Made in Seattle (May 4 – July 23, 2006) at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Nooksack was purchased for the museum by John and Shari Behnke, Rena Bransten, Carlos Garcia, David Lewis, Kim Richter, Josef Vascovitz, Robin Wright, Dawn Zervas, and the Contemporary Arts Council.
Iranian-born photographer, filmaker and video artist SHIRIN NESHAT is best known for videos of archetypal imagery and spare elegance that explore the experience of exile and complexities of contemporary Islam. Her most ambitious works, including Tooba, unfold on two projection screens creating visual oppositions of tradition and modernity, nature and culture, individual and collective and male and female. The video will go on display at the Seattle Asian Art Museum for the reopening on January 14, 2006. Tooba was inspired by the novel Women Without Men by Iranian writer Shahrnoush Parsipour, who was imprisoned for five years for her work. Shot near Oaxaca in Mexico, Tooba contrasts an earthly paradise with a mountainous landscape, and begins by focusing on a central female character nearly merged into a large fig tree set alone in a walled garden. The image of a woman symbolizing the soul of the tree originates in myths of the promised tree in the Koran, commonly known as a “feminine tree.” Over the barren landscape men and women draw near, impinging on this enclosure – the only one within the vast landscape; they threaten the space, solitude and peace therein. As the invading men and women seek refuge in the garden the woman disappears into the tree, called Tooba, which means eternal happiness. In the Koran this tree offers shelter and sustenance. Shirin Neshat explains: “The idea is that they are transcending everyday life and moving into something greater.”
Shirin Neshat was born in Qazvin, Iran in 1957, and came to the United States in 1974 at age 17, to study art at the University of California in Berkeley. Her first return to her country in 1990 coincided with the beginning of her career as a photographer, filmmaker and video artist. She established her reputation in 1999, winning the international prize at the Venice Biennale. She has held solo exhibitions in England at Tate Gallery, London (1998), Serpentine Gallery, London (2000) and in the United States at Walker Art Center (2002) and the Whitney Museum of American Art, Philip Morris (1998). Tooba was commissioned by Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany and was the first of Neshat’s pieces to be shown in her native country, at an exhibition in Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary Art. It was also exhibited at the Asia Society, New York.
Tooba was purchased by the SAM with generous contributions from Jeffrey and Susan Brotman, Jane and David Davis, Barney A. Ebsworth, Jeffrey and Judy Greenstein, Lyn and Jerry Grinstein, Richard and Betty Hedreen, Janet Ketcham, Kerry and Linda Killinger Foundation, James and Christina Lockwood, Michael McCafferty, Christine and Assen Nicolov, Faye and Herman Sarkowsky, Jon and Mary Shirley, Rebecca and Alexander Stewart, William and Ruth True, Bagley and Jinny Wright, Charles and Barbara Wright, and Ann P. Wyckoff.
This important acquisition of works of Shirin Neshat and Claude Zervas has been made to Honor Departing Curator Lisa Corrin. The former Deputy Director of Art/Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, resigned her position to become Director of the Williams College Museum of Art.
