LOS ANGELES, CA.- Craft Contemporary presents The Charm of the Unfamiliar, artist Pouya Afshar’s multi-media story of displacement, migration, and resiliency. Using historic portraiture and animation techniques, digital applications, and augmented reality, the exhibition follows the fictional narrative of a group of migrants that relo- cate to an abandoned city that had once been an amusement park. The displaced in this narrative are hybrid personas – human and animal, some real, some mythical – each physically transformed by their experiences of migration. These hybrid beings embody the toll of displacement and the adaptation and strength migration require and reflect the dehumanization and exoticizing of immigrants and refugees that continues to this day in the United States. Through this work, Afshar aims to open up dialogue about global refugee cri- ses, U.S. immigration policy, and the realities immigrants face when they do make it to the land of the so-called “American Dream.”
“Artists are the ones recording the history,” says Afshar. “One has to live, breathe and feel the surroundings alongside the characters they create.” Essayists S.A. Bachman and Alexandra Isfahani-Ham- mond writing for the upcoming monograph, In Character: Pouya Afshar Selected Works 2010 to 2020, say of the series, “Art doesn’t open borders or cages, but what if viewers are prompted to fathom how it would be to inhabit the dehumanized forms of Afshar’s land- scape, to grasp the lived experiences of beings treated as expend- able, including homosapiens but also crows, pigs, donkeys, camels, horses, and sheep?”
The exhibition begins with the video projection, Washed Ashore, where the viewer sees smoke rising from the migrants’ homeland and their first steps into this new land. Visitors can then peer through the view finders of Shahr-e Farang, Afshar’s interpretation of a 19th Century peepshow box, to watch the short animation, LA DOLCE VITA, which chronicles the story of Hope, a character who decides to leave their war infested city to find a better life abroad. In a series of oil paintings, Ellis I – X, Afshar merges his characters with historic images of detainees at Ellis Island.
These highly staged, exoticized photographs were taken by Ellis Island clerk Augustus Sherman between 1905 and 1925. Sherman’s series of photographs has become an iconic representation ofthe romanticized American immigrant experience and American “melting pot.” In reality, the people pictured were being detained at Ellis Island, often for health or legal reasons. Since Sherman seldom included the names of his subjects, it is rarely known who among them were permitted into the U.S. or were deported back to their home countries. Afshar’s images and video pieces offer windows into his characters’ complex experiences that are largely absent from portrayals of immigrants in mainstream media and political discussions in the U.S.
Afshar also deploys digital technology to further enhance his char- acters’ experiences. Small keepsakes brought by the migrants, such as a teddy bear, materialize via 3-D printing. Through augmented reality, Afshar’s characters even break out of the two-dimensional plane to occupy space and move through the exhibition. Viewers are transformed from voyeur to participant, moving with the characters as they navigate their journey. At the conclusion of this journey, the characters and visitors pass through a constructed wall. Inside, Afshar presents animated interviews in which individuals who immi- grated to the United States share their varied experiences.
Curator Holly Jerger notes, “The political rhetoric surrounding immigration and the world’s refugee crises has grown increasingly inflamed in recent years. Afshar works against this dehumanizing discourse by illustrating the complex reasons people are forced to leave their homelands and the multiple challenges they face upon resettlement. With this exhibition, he asks us to walk with these characters and understand their experiences.”
Born in 1984 during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), Pouya Afshar left Iran with his family at sixteen and resettled in Los Angeles. Afshar’s multidisciplinary practice investigates themes of diaspora, memory, violence, and loss. He is an alumnus of the California Institute of Arts and a graduate of University of California Los Angeles Graduate Department of Film and Television focusing on Animation and Dig- ital Media. He has exhibited his work as a visual artist throughout the United States, Europe, and Middle East, including at the Getty Center, University of Southern California, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Santa Monica Art Studios, 18th Street Arts Center, Craft Contemporary, and numer- ous galleries and art fairs around the world. Pouya has presented his research at Stanford University, Harvard University, University of Southern California, The School of Museum of Fine Arts Boston, University of California, Los Angeles, and Residency Unlimited NY. He is the creator, character designer and producer of the animated series Rostam in Wonderland and the co-creator of 1PA2PA comics and the creator of Tehran graphic novel. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Art and Design at University of Massachusetts, Lowell.
