Abaseh Mirvali

Abaseh Mirvali is an Art and Architecture Curator and Project Producer with a career-long commitment to civic engagement and public service through innovative collaborations between contemporary art initiatives and the community at large. Between 2018 and 2020, Mirvali was the Executive Director, Chief Curator, and CEO at Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB), in California, USA, where she presented the ﬁrst solo U.S. West Coast exhibition of Turin-based artist, Lara Favaretto; the U.S. West Coast solo museum debut exhibition of American ﬁlmmaker and artist, James Benning; the ﬁrst solo institutional exhibition of LA-based artist Brian Rochefort; the U.S. institutional debut of Berlin-based artist and composer Ari Benjamin Meyers and his institution Kunsthalle for Music; a solo exhibition by New York-based artist N. Dash; and the upcoming exhibition of LA-based artist Genevieve Gaignard; having curated 5 of the exhibitions.

In 2018, Mirvali curated the exhibition of Dubai-based Iranian artists Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian, presented at OGR – Ofﬁcine Grandi Riparazioni in Turin, Italy. The exhibition aimed to unveil the artistic practice of these three artists by focusing on their methodology, communication, and construction of their works in dialogue with OGR’s architecture. A 1,200 square-meter (13,000 square-feet) open plan exhibition space inside a multipurpose cultural center in a former train repair facility.

In 2017, Mirvali was one of the invited curators at the curated by Vienna festival in Vienna, Austria, where she curated the exhibition of Austrian artist Dominik Steiger, and Berlin-based Iranian artist Shirin Sabahi. Her latest publication, “The relationship between the transcendental and the tangible. The use of gold and its meaning in the work of Mira Schendel, Mathias Goeritz and Liliana Maresca,” is part of the exhibition catalog, A Tale Of Two Worlds: A Dialogue between the MMK Collection and the History of Experimental Latin American Art, 1940s – 1980s.

In 2016, Mirvali curated the ﬁrst project in Latin America of Toronto-based Iranian artist Abbas Akhavan, which consists of a permanent intervention on FLORA ars+natura’s rooftop in Bogota, Colombia. The project was produced after the artist completed a month-long residency, which Mirvali coordinated alongside José Roca, Artistic Director of FLORA ars+natura.

In 2015, Mirvali curated the ﬁrst exhibitions in Latin America of the Turner Prize winner artist Simon Starling, which were presented in the Luis Barragán House and Studio, and the Experimental Museum El Eco, in Mexico City from January to April and co-edited the book Simon Starling: A–Z, with Mousse Publishing.

Mirvali is the author of the concept and program development of the 2013 edition of The Biennial of the Americas, where she served as CEO, Executive Director and Comisaria from 2011 to 2013. She was the Chief Curator of Draft Urbanism, an innovative and groundbreaking exhibition of urban architectural interventions.

Between 2005 and 2009, Mirvali was the Executive Director of the Colección/Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo, where she consolidated and developed one of the most distinguished collections of contemporary art for a private institution in Latin America.

Works

Kunsthalle for Music

Exhibition view

Kunsthalle for Music is dedicated to presenting music within the histories and environments of the visual arts.

Orchestrated by Meyers, the exhibition’s score is open to variations, which are determined by audience participation, by ensemble members, and by interaction in between audience and ensemble. This approach will translate into unique interpretations—an unrepeatable experience—every day.

Lara Favaretto

Exhibition view

Lara Favaretto. Turin, Italy-based artist Lara Favaretto’s exhibition featured works spanning more than 20-year career, and was presented in collaboration with Rennie Collection, Vancouver, Canada. The exhibition marked Favaretto’s solo U.S. West Coast institutional debut.

Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home

Exhibition view

Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home, presented at OGR – Officine Grandi Riparazioni in Turin, aims to unveil the artistic practice of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian by focusing on their methodology, communication, and construction of their works. The current exhibition does not seek to be a retrospective or a survey of the artists’ oeuvre, but rather a demonstration of how they embrace their practice and heterogeneous sense of creation, an attempt to show the work of Ramin, Rokni, and Hesam froma perspective that observes the mechanisms through which their collaborative practice is conveyed but also how it is formed during a creative process that exalts a working philosophy based on a shared reality and the inclusion of others.

Bowls, Plates

Exhibition view

The first solo exhibition in Latin America of the contemporary artist Simon Starling (Britain, 1967) presented mainly site-specific artworks, in combination with previous works that will serve as a vehicle to establish a connection between the artist’s career and the new projects. The exhibition was meant as one show at two venues: The Luis Barragán House and Studio in collaboration with Michael Steger, Karl Fritsch, Tane, and Alfredo Ortega and Sons; and the Experimental Museum El Eco in collaboration with Pilar Pellicer.

Reflecting on Reflection

Installation view, Mana Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey [Group Show]

Reflecting on Reflection is an exhibition that builds on this duality of the term, presenting artists and works that stand at the edge of “what has been” and “what is yet to come”, taking up the existential question mark of “now what” in their experimentations with matter and our perception of it as much as in their propositions of ways of seeing the world and giving meaning to it in relation to a multitude of situations and contexts.

Investigating the concept of “reflection” in reference as much to the materiality of the works as to the intellectual reflection they produce on human experience in both perceptual and cognitive terms, the works composing the exhibition dialogue through the phenomenological experience of reflection to convey the process through which concepts and ideas are formed in relationship to the material, social and historical contexts that surround us. Saâdane Afif, Abbas Akhavan, Francis Alÿs, Kutluğ Ataman, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, Özgür Demirci, Olafur Eliasson, Cevdet Erek, Lara Favaretto, Alicja Kwade, Matt Mullican, Sarkis, Simon Starling, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Mario Garcia Torres and Alexander Wagner.