Time for a throwback. In February 2013 I left Italy for Australia. I lived in Melbourne for almost an year, and while I was there I started freelancing for English-speaking magazines – though I had already published a couple of pieces for Art Monthly Australia and others the previous year. There I developed a research on the local art system and artists in Melbourne – with a small side report from Perth.
When I came back to Italy, my idea was to make a book about emerging artists in Melbourne, with a similar concept to my Indonesia book. I wanted to give a synthetic but thorough introduction to a an art scene not well known abroad, this time making the book more narrative and focusing on the struggles of the emerging phase of an artist’s career. Because of other commitments – finalizing and publishing the Indonesian book, freelancing steadily for magazines, curating exhibitions, starting out as video-journalist and so on – I ended up working on it intermittently. That made it harder to pick up the book where I left and get back into the right mindset for writing again.
This summer 2015, after having struggled with a final draft of the book, I finally decided to put the project on hold indefinitely. Whether I’ll work on it or not in the future, a part of my research has been published on a number of Australian, Italian and international magazines. Even if the published material is just the tip of the iceberg, it can give you an idea of what I’ve looked at while in Australia – I find the interviews in particular a useful resource. In this long-winged post I’ll give you the coordinates of my reportage, plus the photostory of my research Down Under.
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Published! Interview with Koushna Navabi on Global Comment
I’m back at my desk (figuratively) after a few days hiatus. I didn’t go far really. I’m spending summer in my hometown Sorrento and I have been exploring the beautiful surroundings – Positano, Amalfi, Capri, Ieranto and so on – with my partner in crime, curator Roberto D’Onorio. (Here and here our visual diary where we shamelessly glamourize ourselves.)
Back to my beloved work, it was great to see that Global Comment published my interview with Iranian/American/London-based artist Koushna Navabi. I visited her studio one year ago, and I was fascinated by the delicate dark beauty of her art. Koushna left Iran at sixteen and flew to America. In her teen years, she discovered art, and felt in love with Europe. She therefore moved to London to attend the Goldsmith college, in the beginning of the Young British Artists movement.
Today Koushna is a successful artist living in London. Her work addresses the relationship between West and Middle East, Iranian identity and women issues. It is based both on memories and personal experience, but also discusses past and present politics of her native country. She considers art therapeutic for both the artist and the viewer. In this interview we talk taxidermy, orientalism in art, Koushna’s artistic process, her struggles to accept her Iranian identity and her final decision to embrace it.
Here’s the link to the interview
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