Ayedin Ronaghi, The Gathering

Hudiksvallsgatan 4, 13.1–19.2 2022

GSA Gallery is delighted to present Ayedin Ronaghi’s first exhibition at the gallery.

This project is part of a series of three-part textile installations, comprised of sculptures and text, through which I explore the past, the present and one possible future. The underlying interest is towards observing how individuals interact with their violent surroundings over time, the traces left behind, and how they communicate when words are no longer effective.

The Gathering is an ongoing project that sprung as a reaction to what I perceived as the splintering and silence within my family and circle of friends, both in Iran and Sweden. This splintering was engendered by a chaotic and violent history, with decades of political instability and conflict.

With The Gathering, I wanted to explore that fragmentation; further, I wanted to revisit the past and examine the relationship between individuals and their unstable environment through time, but also to explore the individual themself, and what is left after all the events and traumas – the coup, the Shah era, the Islamic Revolution, the war with Iraq, decades of sanctions… After all this turmoil, what has remained inside the individual?

During this process, I came to realize the ever-presence of “an elephant in the room” that nobody ever acknowledged. This forced me to stop and consider which subject matter is worth examining, what is really happening.

The Gathering attempts to identify and address such thoughts, in the hope of understanding the silence within our relationships.

The chosen supports for the project are handmade Persian rugs – traditional of every Iranian home and the family’s gathering place for meals. Over the past four years, I have spent thousands of hours untying millions of rugs knots, separating every weft from the warp. While reversing this process, I have also tried to reconstruct personal events from the past, through my own memories. But then, how can one remember the past without slightly rewriting it? And if all past things are now gone, can we ever grasp a “true state”?

Text by the artist

Ayedin Ronaghi is a Stockholm-based multi-disciplinary artist, whose practice encompasses sculpture, installation and film. He was born in 1986 in Tehran, Iran, and moved to Sweden at a young age. In 2019, he gained an MA in Fine Arts from Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design.

Parts of The Gathering have been shown at Konstfack.

Ronaghi’s works were previously shown at Eskilstuna konstmuseum (2021), Rian designmuseum, Falkenberg (2020) and Norrtälje konsthall (2020).

Works in the exhibition: