Zahra Babaei
Born from a material engagement with fabric and weaving, My Two Bodies sees textile as an archive of movement and bodily proximity, an object marked by its constant presence despite its performative disappearance. It has wrapped bodies as covers and clothes, and turned into curtains for space, as it stages a form of opening in the theatricality of the everyday. Within its wrap and weft, fabric holds movement in place and animates the space around. Though structurally unchanged, it takes the shape of whatever it covers yet does not fix what is hidden. In the vacuum of vision, material becomes the site where the invisible, ghostly,
camouflaged, hidden, and absent reside. My Two Bodies gestures toward this unmapped space of the everyday rituals, where objects bring their own intelligence to the surface of the image and recreate a discourse through an ocular touch.
Featured in:
Born in Tehran in 1996, Zahra Babaei is an artist-researcher based in Rochester, New York. She is a current PhD student in the Visual and Cultural Studies program at University of Rochester. Zahra holds a BA in Photography from the Tehran University of Art and an MFA in Photography and Related Media at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Her work has been recognized internationally at Photoworks, Prospect Art, Tropic Bound Bookfair, PhMuseum, InVisible Culture Journal, and The International Biennial CODEX Book Art Fair.
