Paradeisos. Stratification of Memory
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| free admission |
| Exhibition area "Discover the West" 3rd Floor, Room 306 |
| 12 years and older |
| English |
| 3rd floor |
| max. 30 persons |
| Belongs to: Ethnological Collections and Asian Art |
Ahad Moslemi and Alice Mestriner are an artist duo whose work deals with the investigation and formation of meanings that are changed or modified, lost or redefined over time. They have been working together since they met in Canada in 2016 and began using dust as the raw material and theoretical concept of their artistic research in their installations and performances in 2017: “Dust is an active plastic memory: the home of identity, history, life and transformation. It is a method that moves from matter to the outside by observing the narratives it contains.”
The starting point for their artistic exploration as Fellows at the Ethnologisches Museum and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst is the exhibition “Discovery of the West”, which deals with the reception, appropriation, and reinterpretation of concepts with “Western” connotations in the Ottoman Empire and Persian Empires. In the summer of 2023 as part of an open call, they were nominated by an international jury as artists-in-residence to develop an intervention in this exhibition. The result of their artistic research is the work Paradeisos, a carpet “woven and embroidered with dust, a plastic memory of the world”. In conversation with the curator for contemporary art Prof. Dr. Kerstin Pinther and Dr. Melanie Krebs, curator for the collections from North Africa, West and Central Asia, they talk about the continuation of this artistic collaboration, about dust as a material and metaphor.
Ahad Moslemi und Alice Mestriner are CoMuse Fellows at the Ethnologisches Museum and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst in Summer 2023 and April 2024.
CoMuse – The Collaborative Museum is an initiative by the Ethnologisches Museum and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst that aims to develop multi-perspective approaches to collection-based research and to test new formats of international collaborative processes in order to intensify the decolonisation and diversification of museum practices in sustainable way.
Ahad Moslemi (*1983, Tehran, Iran) began his studies 1998 at the School of Fine Arts in Tehran. In 2011 he emigrated to Canada where he continued his studies at the University of Quebec in Trois-Rivières at the department of plastic arts. He participated in exhibitions and conferences in Canada, Mexico, Greece, Germany, USA, Belgium, and Portugal. In 2016 he won the Prix du Doyen with the project “Les Conséquences de la guerre sur les enfants”. In the same year, he was invited to join a conference at the 56th Venice Biennale with the artist Ola-Dele Kuku “A Continuous state of Time”. In 2017 he participated in an exhibition in the North Adams, MA (USA) for the Prints Biennial.
Alice Mestriner (*1994, Treviso, Italy) began her studies in Visual Arts in 2008 at the Liceo Artistico Statale in Treviso. In 2017 she graduated from the Iuav University of Venice in Multi-media Arts. She attended classes in Cultural Anthropology at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. In 2015 she traveled to Turkey to study at Hacettepe University in Ankara with the Erasmus program. She finished her studies with an internship in Canada, Quebec. She won an honourable mention in photography from Monochrome Awards. In 2016 she collaborated with Ola-Dele Kuku to organise “A Continuous State of Time” at the 56th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale.
In 2018, both together attended the Erasmus+ Course Mobility of Youth Workers, “Social Inclusion through artistic tools” in London. In 2020 they attended the course “Tangible things: discovering history through artworks, artifacts, scientific specimens and the stuff around you” at Harvard University. In 2022 they graduated (MA) in Visual Arts from the Iuav University of Venice, with the thesis “Plastic Memory and Aesthetics of Immortality”. In 2022 they took part in the COME2ART Project “Introducing a collaborative scheme between artists & community members fostering life skills development and resilience through creative placemaking”, a European Project founded by Erasmus+, KA2, ΙΚΥ. In addition to their artistic research, they have created workshops and educational programs in schools, universities, and companies.
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