Untitled 2002

Curator: Mostafa Dashti created this untitled piece in 2002 using acrylic on canvas, venturing into the realms of abstract expressionism. Editor: Wow, my first thought? A kind of dreamlike landscape… maybe one seen through tear-filled eyes. There’s this blurriness and intensity to the colors, it is melancholic, but has something…warm about it. Curator: It’s interesting that you read it as a landscape. We could think about landscape painting as a deeply gendered genre within the history of Western art, often excluding or misrepresenting non-Western perspectives. Could this abstraction serve as a response, maybe even a disruption to that tradition? Editor: Hmm, disruption… I was thinking more of a gentle questioning. Like, what does "landscape" even mean? Is it a physical place, or an emotional one? Or, hear me out, maybe it's a reflection of the artist's mindscape? You see the drips of the pigment—the black and yellows— it looks like repressed anger seeping down. That bright, white splotch sits heavy in the middle. It feels...stuck, like anxiety embodied. Curator: Interesting… Anxiety, I think, could certainly resonate within socio-political spheres if we consider, more broadly, themes of displacement, power, and social commentary often linked to abstract art. Dashti’s position as an Iranian artist gives us so much more to analyze using frameworks like postcolonialism and theories of globalization. Editor: Whoa, okay, dial it back to earth for a sec. Theory is great, but don't you think art should also just, you know, *feel* something? Sometimes labels just limit your ability to connect with it, to just get lost in it! And it does not need to be some academic interpretation. I look at that yellow and black—it reminds me of my cat, who is sunshine personified but also has this shadow self. You can love and hate something simultaneously! Curator: It’s certainly powerful how Dashti provokes such varied interpretations, blurring the boundaries between the personal and the socio-political, no? Editor: Absolutely. Art is all about connections, both to ourselves and to the world around us...cats included.