BITA FAYYAZI | WHEN STILL A CHILD

Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai 

 Rather than a sculptor, installation artist or ceramicist engaged in a somewhat mystic relationship with her materials, Bitta Fayyazi (b. 1962, Iran) is an artist who works within a more performative and markedly social practice. Beginning in mid-1990s, her artistic interventions challenged the official definitions of art that were often circulated in Tehran at that time. Fayyazi struggled to show her work amidst an atmosphere of traditionalism, academicis and the influx of 1990s conceptual art from abroad.

Fayyazi’s oeuvre has been relentlessly calling attention to the most vulnerable group in society. In 2000, in a three-storey abandoned house in Tehran, Bita Fayyazi participated in Children of the Dark City, a group exhibition including multi-media installations, sculptures, videos, photographs and paintings about the harmful effects of heavy air pollution on children. Fayyazi created all-white life-size sculptures of expressive, sculpted children who appear to both play and plead.

Fayyazi successfully entered thousands of outsized ceramic cockroaches into Tehran’s 6^th Biennial of Contemporary Ceramic Art, despite an attempt by several members of the committee to oust her work from the show and in doing so, formed the earliest installation piece shown in Tehran. Later, she cast and fired 150 terracotta dogs (Road Kill, 1998), modelled on dead dogs found on the highways in Tehran. She later placed her crushed and run-over dogs on a stretch of empty road near Tehran. Each of Fayyazi’s work has its roots in a form of participative social sculpture of gathering whatever materials are readily available. She also brings together artists and non-artistically inclined collaborators who can wrap and entwine, paint and cast.

Fayyazi has presented major installations and performances internationally. She participated in the 51^st Venice Biennale (2005) with Kismet, a major suspended installation of a cloud of babies morphing into cocoons, casted in bronze. Fayyazi has also exhibited at La Maison Rouge, Paris (2016); Espace Louis Vuitton, Paris (2010 and 2008); the Museum of Modern Art, Freiburg (2007) and the Pergamon Museum, Berlin (2008), among several others. In 2014, she was a laureate of the prestigious Prince Claus Award.

Her works can be found in the collections of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; La Fabrica (Benetton Group Communication Centre), Treviso; Simon de Pury Collection, Geneva and the Salsali Private Museum, Dubai

Fayyazi lives and works in Tehran, Iran.