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Azin Seraj and David Wallace offer fresh artistic perspectives on some of the thorny political issues we face in the U.S. in their East Bay exhibits called, respectively, Sublunar at Martina }{ Johnston Gallery in Berkeley and Friends, Family, Neighbors at Royal NoneSuch Gallery in Oakland. These two artists are peers with significant similarities in terms of subject, the way they make art, and their selected media.
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Also addressing inflation, the piece 11,111, in the main gallery, consists of formally framed Iranian currency. The bills are arranged both chronologically and in powers of ten. Importantly, the new 10,000 Toman bill, with its image of Khomenei, has less purchasing power than the 57-year-old 1 Toman bill, with its image of the Shah. In the same room is the video installation Kaseye Sabr Labriz Mishavad / Bowl of Patience in which footage of Iranians speaking about the effects of the sanctions is projected into a bowl of water.
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What strikes me about this film is that it gives the viewer the opportunity to get lost in a vision of the drone seen through the imagination of a young child, a safe and innocent world far from the battlefield. Viewers are given the freedom to bring their own critical narrative to the piece, to remember at our own pace that we are looking at a sophisticated military weapon developed as a key tool in the so-called War on Terror.
Seraj and Wallace seek to expose the means by which the U.S. effects geopolitical change, calling attention to the violence and suffering caused. They use appropriated images and call on nature as a symbol of transcendence, as in Seraj’s use of the moon, water, and dirt, and Wallace’s projected birds. Both artists present work about a specific political theme, their goal being neither to inform viewers of specific details of the issue, nor to convince them to adopt a specific opinion, but rather to take a challenging issue with enormous implications and break it down, re-presenting it on a human scale so that viewers can make up their own minds.
–KATHERINE SHERWOOD