"Erosion" by Laleh Mehran (NOT FOR SALE)

The visual fractures of "Erosion" symbolize the gender disparities in Iran, highlighting the invisible borders that women face. While navigating their daily lives within the country, women are subjected to stringent gender-specific regulations, including dress codes and behavior, imposed by the regime's power structure. When it comes to their ability to travel beyond the borders of their own homeland, the authority lies solely with a man; women must secure permission from a male figure, whether it be her husband or a male guardian.

As a woman filming in various cities across Iran, the very act of disrupting and altering the male gaze was empowering. The footage captured from ordinary scenes of public life were transformed into an ever-shifting geometric landscapes. The audio in "Erosion" is derived from a mashup of both the national anthems of the United States and Iran.

Artist's Bio:

Laleh Mehran was born in Iran and relocated with her family to the United States at the start of the Iranian Islamic Revolution. Mehran creates elaborate environments in digital and physical spaces focused on complex intersections between politics, religion, and science. In a political climate in which certain views are increasingly suspect and can have extreme consequences, Mehran’s artworks are invitations to think again about each of these paradigms and the profound connections that bind them. Her research, often modeled on and about the very ideas of science and technology, takes advantage of their cultural importance in order to articulate a set of ideas which require precisely these kinds of mediations from both political and religious intolerance. Out of necessity, her artwork is as veiled as it is explicit, as personal as it is political and as critical as it is tolerant. Mehran received her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University. Her work has been shown individually and collaboratively in the USA and international venues including the ISEA (United Arab Emirates), National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (Taiwan), FILE (Brazil), ACT Festival (South Korea), Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Massachusetts), Mattress Factory Museum (Pennsylvania), Carnegie Museum of Art (Pennsylvania), Vanderbilt University (Tennessee), The Georgia Museum of Art (Georgia), The Andy Warhol Museum (Pennsylvania), Denver Art Museum (Colorado), Biennial of the Americas at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (Colorado), 404 International Festival of Art & Technology (Argentina), Next 5 Minutes 4 Tactical Media Festival (Netherlands), European Media Arts Festival (Germany), Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (Colorado), Currents: The Santa Fe International New Media Festival (New Mexico), the Pittsburgh Biennial (Pennsylvania), and the Daniels & Fisher Clock Tower (Colorado). Mehran is a Professor in the Emergent Digital Practices program at the University of Denver.