Appearance Stripped Bare

Negin Sharifzadeh

Curated by Giulio Verago

​

Appearance Stripped Bare work uses photography, sculpture, and animation to interrogate the concept of the European Renaissance as an isolated phenomenon, rather than a period in organic conversation with movements that had started earlier in the Middle East.Sharifzadeh explores the impact of the broader Mediterranean culture and ideas that helped spark and inform Europe’s rebirth, juxtaposed against the present-day collisions of culture, by placing her own body as a contemporary woman from the Middle East within the imagery, iconography, and physical geography of the Italian Renaissance. Too often, art historians have placed European arts in a position of privilege, exorcising and minimizing arts from other regions. Through this re-contextualization and reclamation, she aims to challenge the very idea of European and Middle Eastern otherness.