Anahita Norouzi
The Circuit of Dispossession

May 27 to June 30th, 2023

Galerie Nicolas Robert is proud to present The Circuit of Dispossession by Anahita Norouzi, in the Project Room. In this series, the artist collides private recollections with external representations of her community, botanical framings of native iris flowers, and the ways in which her country has been transfigured, through oil extraction for example, by foreign powers. These juxtapositions feature in her work, The Circuit of Dispossession (2022), in which Norouzi conjures the ugly truth of the world’s insatiable appetite for fossil fuels, and how Iran’s oil wealth has been both a blessing and a curse for its people. The exoticizing Orientalist gaze is conflated here with extractive industries, the race to control natural resources, and the ensuing spectacle of violence that often conceals the impact of reckless Western politics on the region’s populations.

Norouzi’s work has been shown nationally and internationally, most recently at BIENALESUR, the International Contemporary Art Biennial of South America (Buenos Aires), Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto), and soon at Musée National des beaux-arts du Québec and Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. She has received numerous grants, fellowships, and awards, most notably, the Grantham Foundation Creation Award, Liz Crockford Artist Fund Award, and the Vermont Studio Center Merit. She is the winner of the Contemporary art award of the Musée National des beaux-arts du Québec (2023) and of the Impressions residency at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2022). She is a shortlisted artist at the Sobey Art Award (2023), and a finalist in the Magic of Persia Contemporary Art Award for pieces shown at the Henry Moore Gallery in London and in Dubai.