MARZIEH KARIMI

In Other Words

2018-2024
Mixed Media

Holga

2019-2024

Stir Crazy

Residency & Exhibition @ Monte Vista Projects
2021
Mixed Media
Collaboration with Ariel Mazariegos

A souvenir spoon is a uniquely designed relic representing a person, place or historical event. Travelers often purchase them to commemorate a trip, collect them as a niche hobby, or gift them upon their return from travel. Stir Crazy involves an appropriation of a collection of souvenir spoons. Some are tarnished showing the history of ownership, while others have shiny bowls reflecting the room distorted and upside down. Each spoon that was originally a token of a popular place is cut, painted, stamped and manipulated. The newly altered spoons impose fictitious places, memories, thoughts and imagined stories.

HERE Is Not HERE

2015-2020
Pigment Print

The photographic series HERE Is Not HERE incorporates various images drawn from my previous photographs taken in the United States and Iran. The cutout pieces and images are urban spaces, street signs, and still life compositions. The process of extracting subjects from their primary sources and reassembling them into staged spaces emphasize the idea of displacement. They go through the process of transforming from two-dimensional images to three-dimensional installations, and then by taking photograph of this staged space they become two- dimensional once again. Through deconstruction and reconstruction, the objects and places come together to acquire new meanings. These final images contain various layers of different times and places instead of being confined a specific moment. The result is a surreal image that disorients viewers, drawing them into my fictional world.