The Pool · Leila Mesdaghi · Kress Window on 7th Ave
The Pool (from Deeper Than Sorrow), Leila Mesdaghi, print on acrylic, 16”x32”, 2016-2022, $400
Leila Mesdaghi’s work The Pool is presented by Parachute Gallery in the street-level window on E 7th Ave in Ybor City. This photographic collage is part of Mesdaghi’s project Deeper Than Sorrow (2016-2022), a performance work the artist began in 2016 in Tehran, Iran, documented by photos and video.
“In Deeper Than Sorrow, I entered our old pool that has been sitting empty in our home in Tehran, Iran, for over 30 years. The pool has been a witness to our lives as we grew up and seen us all move, or pass away. The house next door was being demolished as I was writing on the cracked and faded walls of the pool, leaving behind traces of memory and presence to recuperate the pain of separation and longing.”
The Pool (from Deeper Than Sorrow), Leila Mesdaghi, print on acrylic, 16”x32”, 2016-2022, $400
Parachute Gallery · 1624 E 7th Ave #240, Tampa, FL 33605
About the Artist
Leila Mesdaghi · Fort Myers, FL · Leila Mesdaghi is an Iranian-Colombian artist born in New York City in 1977. She moved to Iran after the Iranian revolution in 1978 and lived in Tehran until she moved back to the US after graduating from the Tehran Islamic Azad Law University in 2000. She received a BA in Art from Florida Gulf Coast University in 2016, and was the Residency Assistant at the Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, FL for three years. She is currently working toward her MFA at Bard College, and is the Chair of the City of Fort Myers Public Art Committee. Her interdisciplinary work includes painting, sculpture, video, performance, and installation, and depicts subjects such as shame and vulnerably.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Art is the glue that keeps me connected, allows me to play, and expands my understanding. I think a lot about relationships, love, and feelings of longing and abandonment. The complexity of growing up in Iran after the revolution, living through the eight years of the Iran-Iraq’s imposed war, heavy restrictions, and also growing up in an Iranian-Colombian household has all been informing my work.
To me, making art is about solving small problems and that’s how I find hope in bigger issues, and life. I think of my pieces as emotion-scapes as I challenge to give emotional and psychological concepts a visual realization. I have made work about capturing a sigh, telling dark secrets, punishing my tongue, and writing unreadable letters to my lovers. For each project I chose the medium that would best translate my ideas. I have been merging performance, video, and sound, to make installations and create multi-sensory experiences. My body, my voice, and sometimes my strength become my medium. In my recent work, I collaborated with photographers, vocalists, dress-makers, and my psychologist to make poetic images and videos in the house I grew up in Tehran, Iran.
