AUSTRALIA
Iranian Artist in
Residence at BRAG
Hossein Valamanesh is in 
Bundaberg as the artist in residence at the Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery. The Iranian-born Australian artist has had his artwork exhibited across Australia and the world over the years, with his art heavily influenced by his Iranian heritage as well as his connection to Australia.
Valamanesh’s installation, After Rain, will mark the fourth installation in The Vault, as part of the Literary Notions installation series.
“After Rain was inspired by one of the scenes from the play When the Rain Stops Falling, where a tree comes from above and stays within the scene for a number of minutes,” he said.
Valamanesh’s work is influenced by his position as an Iranian-born Australian and deals with the common ground between cultures as well as aspects of displacement and travel. Philosophy and spirituality are also essential to his work, particularly the poetry and traditions of Sufism.
After Rain can be viewed until August 17 at BUNDABERG REGIONAL ART GALLERY
Contact 4130 4750 or
www.brag-brc.org.au
MUMBAI
Art Show Explores
Abstract Painting
Curated by Oxford based 
British Jane Neal, Between Worlds features works by international artists Ali Banisadr, Marius Bercea, Angel Otero and Fiona Rae at Galerie ISA. All four artists explore the territory between abstraction and figuration, and each enjoys the physicality of painting and its process.
Ali Banisadr is a famous Iranian born American artist, whose works are exhibited in many museums over the globe. He has also made his name at a young age for being one of the most important Iranian-American artists of his generation.
Says gallery owner Ashwin Thadani, “If archaeology is about exposing the hidden, then painting is the ideal ground for its application. The medium involves the building up of strata — the textured layering of
personal and collective memories; interplaying with fiction; intertwining real and virtual. The ‘hidden’ is contained in the visible; the forgotten or imagined often resurrected through the process of painting.
Sometimes artists like to play with invisibility using paint to create emotional as well as physical contexts, at other times they seek to convey a haptic sensibility through powerfully physical abstraction. The issue of the unseen, or partially uncovered and what it might contain or mask, is particularly resonant for all these painters working today. Though each is distinctly different, they share in common the ability to convey the tension between what is visible on the surface and what might lie beneath.”
Between Worlds can be viewed at Galerie ISA, 27- Great Western Building, 1st Floor, S Bhagatsingh Road, Opposite Lion Gate, Fort till September 20, 11 am to 7 pm.
NEW YORK
FIFI HOWLS FROM HAPPINESS
is the award-winning documentary film by Mitra Farahani. The film had its World premiere as the Official Selection at the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival and screened at numerous film festivals including New York, Telluride, and Seattle
Iranian painter and sculptor Bahman Mohasses, who was a celebrated and iconoclastic figure in the pre-revolutionary 60s and 70s, was known for his art as well as his merciless public pronouncements. Mohasses remained in Iran after the revolution, but he frequently traveled in secret to Italy, which he finally made his home in 2006. Throughout the years, many of his works were destroyed by the new government, and many more by Mohasses himself. Filmmaker Mitra Farhani tracked down Mohasses in a Roman hotel and filmed him during the last six months of his life. The poetic self-portrait that they made together is a joyous celebration of freedom—to create, to destroy, to indulge, to pontificate and make withering judgments, to live without regret.
FIFI HOWLS FROM HAPPINESS will open at the Lincoln Plaza in New York on August 8, and at Laemmle Theaters in Los Angeles on August 15. A national release will follow.
LOS ANGELES
“Local Not Local” Exhibits Arab & Iranian California Designers-Artists
From a design perspective, what do we really know about the Arab world, or Iraq’s neighbor, Iran? A window into these cultures, which use the Arabic script for writing and design, will open here in Los Angeles on June 26, 2014, when LOCAL NOT LOCAL, a modern collection of contemporary expression, brings Arabic and Iranian typography and calligraphy to the Inside/Outside Gallery at the Levantine Cultural Center. In LOCAL NOT LOCAL, co-curators Maece Seirafi and Pouya Jahanshahi present a collection of award-winning Arab and Iranian designers who demonstrate the creative possibilities and expressions that lurk in their native alphabets.
LOCAL NOT LOCAL PRESENTS NEW WORK OF ARAB & IRANIAN ARTISTS AND GRAPHIC DESIGNERS AT THE INSIDE/OUTSIDE GALLERY, until AUGUST 29, 2014
(From levantinecenter.org)