Before the beginning and after the end, 2018
Acrylic and Watercolor on Panel
30x24"
Tehran-born, DC-based Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi takes the cosmic view of the culture wars between the United States and Middle East. In her nearly psychedelic works, traditional Persian imagery and Modernist American painting techniques bleed together in pictures that are at once luminous and mesmerizing and turbulently unresolved. Throughout, tazhibpatterns common to Arabic art and calligraphy are both subsumed by color and float above it. One is reminded of the dazzling effects of a chemical reaction, the results of which have yet to come.
“I Surrender To You, Ashen Lands And Blue Skies” is on view through June 29, 2019 at HEMPHILL, 1515 14th Street NW #300 Washington, DC.