Gita Meh
Born in 1963, Tehran, Iran. 29 years had passed since I last lived in Iran. During 29 years of migration, I was able to examine how identity is shaped by differences in language, gender,
ethnicity and culture, desire, exile, solitude and freedom, allowing me to re-create my own experience of cross-cultural spaces.
Finally, in 2011 I came back to Iran, luggage filled with files and memories of half of the globe. Before her death, my mother was helping me un-pack the geographies,
the languages, the many mountains, faces, cultures,
brushes, and rolls of canvases, eyebrows and tongues that constituted my artistic past practices. Together, we looked at images of so many different kinds of “clouds”
on my Apple laptop. I realized I was home.
The Surrealist Manifesto by the poet Andre Breton was proclaimed in Paris in 1924. His goal was to liberate thinking, language, and human being and experience from oppressive boundaries,
and we are still within those boundaries today. Breton’s revolutionary move towards liberation of the human mind from violence and ignorance echoes throughout my work
and is focused in my current project proposal “"We Are Travelers on Earth. Not Wreckers...”.” Which in the broadest sense is to create visual thinking.
My art attempts to expand surrealism into a merging of cultural differences between East and West, by brushing Earth as one soil, one soul.
This project examines with oil on canvas the fact that Art is a nourishing phenomenon, a meta-milk, if you will.
The art and the act of painting is a duplication of mental pixels, a pattern the creator sets out to translate and to exhibit in visual form.
I want my art to ignite and to awaken spectators from the memory pixels of their own unconscious, to bring these collective archetypes into illuminated experiences.
Oil, soil, dirt on canvas. This is an ongoing series of landscapes that turn into roads, roads which when followed become faces, faces become nests,
birds singing love songs which soon transform into soil and into another face after another tree, after another eye, watching, rain drops, growing.
And I dedicate this new series of oil paintings titled "We Are travelers on Earth .
not Wreckers "to Fatemeh who taught me how to make a circle, then a line, then an “i,” then another eye, then a smile.
Also I would like to thank my supporters who, with their extraordinary insight and understanding, have given me the ability and the courage to bring my visions into tangible realities.
Education
1997 MFA, Pending, California Institute of The Arts, Creative & Critical Writing/Integrated Media
1996 BFA, Visual Arts Program, California Institute of The Arts
1992 P’ART, Professor Bernd Mac, Stuttgart, Germany
1989 Freie Kunstschule, Zuffenhausen, Germany
1983 Academia Delle Belle Arti, Three months drawing, Florence, Italy
1981 Azadegan, School of Visual Arts, Tehran, Iran
1976 Private Studies, Professor Petgar, Abbas Abad, Tehran
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2011 I Command, Paintings, Cuadro Fine Arts Gallery, Dubai International Financial Center, Dubai, UAE
2010 Sweet City, An installation, Dubai International Financial Center, Permanent Collection, Dubai, UAE
Sculpthers, Burj Khalifa Private Collection, On Permanent Display, 134th Floor, Dubai, UAE
2009 Silent Voices, Mixed media Paintings, Carbon 12 Gallery, Dubai, UAE
2008 27 Years of Migration, Tashkeel Gallery, Dubai, UAE
Soffreh, Meaning Tablecloth, Digestible art, Jam Jar Gallery, Dubai, UAE
Barbie’s Relocated, Photography, Focus Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE
Migratory Patterns, Paintings, Hoor Gallery, Tehran, IRAN
2006 Passage, Paintings, Seyhoun Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
Metamorphosis, Paintings, Athens Art Space Gallery, Athens, GREECE
2005 No Stopping In Searching, Paintings, Polytropon Gallery, Kalamata, GREECE
2003 Soffreh, Digestible art, Inmo Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
Soffreh, Digestible art, Inmo Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2002 Chadoor Study, Paintings, Drawings, Installations, Watt Plaza, Los Angeles, CA
1999 Say Ya Ali Then Exit On Exile, Paintings, Khane-ye Honarmandan-e IRAN
1991 Wounded Wishes, Painthings, Art Gallery, Den Huge, NEDERLAND’S
1990 I Formed My Arch, Painthings, Gallery Shilling, Schorndorf, GERMANY
Selected Group Exhibition
2017 Sirous E Ghaem Maghami Cultural Center, Alborz Province, Karaj, Iran
Art Center Montazeran, Library of the Martyrs of Banou Sahra, Iran
2016 Spectrum Miami, Art Box Projects, Miami, USA
Landscape of Soil, Meeting At gallery, Lisbon, Portugal
2013 Nations, Water, Culture, Painthing, United Nations Headquarters, N.Y, N.Y
Landscape of Home, Parallex Art Fair, London, UNITED KINGDOM
2012 Our Mothers Bed, Auction House, Young Collectors, Fundraising for children with special need, Dubai, UAE
2011 I Command, Salsali Private Museum, Dubai, UAE
Women of My Lands, Opera Gallery, Standard Charter, Fundraising for Blind Children, DIFC, Dubai, UAE
2010 My Universe, Painthings, Holbein Gallery, Hannover, GERMANY
Our Mothers Bed, Emirati Women Expression, United Nation Head Quarter, New York, USA
AlefBa Meaning Alphabet, Photography, Salwa Zeiden Gallery, Abu Dhabi, UAE
2009 SIMORGH, To Act Locally Is To Think Globally, Green Visions, Art Oasis, Dubai, UAE
Soffreh, Digestible art, Sharjah Biennial 09, Sharjah, UAE
2008 No Flag, Just Love, Conventions and Attitudes, Group Trade and Row, New York, Los Angeles, CA
Barbie’s Relocated, Slick Art Fair, Paris, FRANCE
Alef Ba, Meaning Alphabet, XVA Gallery, Creek Art Fair, Dubai, UAE
Vibrations Withtin, Tashkeel Gallery, Dubai, UAE
2007 Poetics Painted, Contemporary Museum of Art, MOCA Tehran, Eight Biennale of Iranian Painters, Tehran, IRAN
In The Streets of Liberty, Gallery One, San Francisco, USA
2007 Work and Survivor, Museum of Contemporary Art, MOCA at the Geffen Contemporary, Susan Lacy
In the Hanging Garden, Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
From Kabba to N.Y, Red Dot Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
2004 Apple, paintings & installation, Merging One Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2003 Namaz a Trilingual Prayer, video installation, 18th street Arts Complex, Santa Monica, CA
Soffreh, video installation, Freewaves, Los Angeles, USA
2002 Chadoor, performance, Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, USA
2001 Overflowing, AlefBa meaning Alphabet, Bergamot Station, Track 16 Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2001 Chadoor, performance, Beyond Baroque, Venice, CA
Alef Ba Meaning Alphabt, Artists/Writing/Reading Room III, Side Street Project, Los Angeles, CA
1991 Simorgh, Contemporary Museum of Art, MOCA Tehran, First Biennial of Iranian Painters, Tehran, IRAN
Selected Publications
2010 The Reflective Mirrors, United Nations Head Quarters, New York, USA
Sweet City, Dubai International Financial Center, Dubai, UAE
2009 Provisions, Sharjah Biennial 09, Sharjah, UAE
2008 27 Years of Migration, Tashkeel Gallery, Dubai, UAE
Migratory Patterns, Hoor Gallery, Tehran, IRAN
At Time Attar, At Time at Far, Persian Heritage, Poem, Vol. 10, No. 40 winter, Passaic, NJ, USA
Selected Reviews
2010 Brown Book, Gulf News, Resurrection des Mannequins, May-June Issue
2009 Al Bayan, Silent Voices, Resha Al Malah, 26 June, pg 37
Time Out, Chris Lord, Silent Voices, pg.5
L’Arte Poilitica Dell’Ospetalita, Tehran, Dubai, Venice, Ilari Valnonesi, pg.1,2,3
2008 Al Khalleej, Soffreh, Sharjah Biennial 09, March 20, Front Cover
The National, Movement and Identity, Sarah Wolff, November 12, pg.3
Gulf News, Caravan of Peripatetic, Laylla Haroon, October 31, pg.14
Inside Out, Cultural Nourishment, Inga Marie-Barnett, September, Issue 56, pg.99
Time Out, Gita Meh in Dubai, Chris Lord, September 10, Dubai
2007 LA Weekly, Pick of the week, Migration Study, Peter Frank, September 6, Los Angeles
2006 Peter Frank, Inscribing the Body, Exhibition Catalogue, Passage, November 6, pg. 2, Los Angeles Art In America, March, N.Y, N.Y
Reviews in Athens News & other leading art publications, April 12, Athens, Greece
2005 George Zymarakis, Birth of A Star, Gallery Guide, November, pgs. 9, 34, 35, Athens, Greece
Gioula Sardeli, Every Window Has A Story, Freedom Newspaper, October 13, pg, 2, 10, Athens
Anna Resbani, Gita Sees the Beauty Of The World & Turns that Knowing Into Paintings,
2002 National Woman’s Review, Chadoor Study, pg. 91, Los Angeles
2001 Norman Klein, Emptiness Digitalized
1997 Joan Hugo, The Speaking Body And The Disembodied Voice, Forum of Art And Technology, pg. 8, LA
1994 Amnesty International, Calendar, January, pg. 12, Den Hague, Nederland
1992 MRM, Menshen Rechten Magazine, March, Back Cover, Den Hague, Nederland
Andreas Krobberger, Fremdliche Botschaften, September 15, pg. 15, Germany
1991 Cultures Integrated In Paintings, Reiner Shauz, The Stuttgarter Zeitung, January 6, pg. 5
1990 Beauty Is Truth, Steve Snyder, Stuttgart Citizen, November 2, pg. 5, Stuttgart, Germany
