PORTALS: Laleh Khorramian and Alia Farid, curated by Margarida Mendes

‘The fugitive remains. In its escapology a practice of futurity.’

The present exhibition displays works by Laleh Khorramian and Alia Farid, in a unique duo presentation in Lisbon. Comprising textile art, collage, and video, the two artists merge languages of ritual and transcendence through space-time conjuring. In doing so they evoke the possibility of physical ascension, from a narrative of displacement and relocalization, to conspire alternate dimensions, and parallel realities.

Laleh Khorramian presents a large-scale installation comprising textile works developed between 2021-22, that the artist composed as scroll paintings, including mixed techniques from stencil to assemblage, that translate painterly techniques reframed as digital technology. This installation is joint by the collage ‘Egg Rig’, and a new commission, ‘Bones in the Garden’, installed in the windows of the gallery facade, that envelops the space as a reverberating portal and threshold of light. A portal that acts “as a mirage of a garden in the midst of destruction, where beneath is history, bones, bodies and the dust of centuries is invisible, never-ending.”

Alia Farid is showing the video ‘At the Time of the Ebb’, exploring the tensions between colonial borders, resources, and movement, through a summer solstice ritual shot across Sharjah’s waterline, when fisherman fast and give thanks to nature for its bounty.

Laleh Khorramian is an Iranian artist living in upstate New York. Alia Farid currently lives and works between Kuwait and Puerto Rico. Margarida Mendes curates from the Atlantic seashore.