IRUS
Two teams of artists, one in Tehran and another in Denver have assembled under one name: IRUS (Iran - United States). Starting with our mutual respect for art, we have established collaborative projects between our groups.
By mailing incomplete artworks from Tehran to Denver and from Denver to Tehran, completing them in our respective cities and sending them back, we are building a collection of completed pieces.
Using the theme of "Dialogue," it is our goal to present the perspectives of each group in a respectful, trusting and encouraging manner. In this process, we are not only developing art, but also participating in a functional dialogue with each other as artists and individuals. One component of the show is the Persian story of Scheherazade alongside the stories of Mark Twain as a conceptual framework for the art, further promoting the exploration of, and interaction between the two cultures.
This functional dialogue is manifesting itself locally in conversations among individuals and globally through the modification of artwork by all the members of IRUS. Through the exhibition of our work and the documentation of the process, we will be displaying our dialogue to the public beginning March 21st. We will also have conversation at the exhibition with the telepresence of the Persian artists.
Both teams consist of artists proficient in a range of media. Through collaborative interaction we are interested in participating in dialogue. The project began when the artist community, the Kinda Collective approached Morehshin Allahyari about working with the concept of intercultural art in Iran to confront the misconceptions between our cultures.
After developing and refining a basic concept, developing a proposal, and gathering a team, Allahyari invited Negin Ehtesabian, a Persian artist in Tehran, to form a team of artists.
This Iranian team co-developed a proposal with the Kinda Collective to present the works of this collaboration –a unique combination of painting, video art, drawings, photographs, software, street art, and design– in Denver in the spring of 2009, followed by a show in Tehran in the summer of 2009.
irusart.org