AURÉLIA ZAHEDI Française, b. 1989

Last September, in order to prepare my article for the Quotidien de l'Art, Aurélia Zahedi invited me to spend a few days in her current home, a house in a small village about an hour from Agen. In these times of confinement and constraints, my stay was to remind me just how important the physical experience of an encounter is, and in my case, how necessary it is to understanding an artist's work.

After my first night at Maison Auriolles, a research centre co-founded in 2018 by artist Aurélia Zahedi, I found a note on the kitchen table written on pink paper: "Went to play the organ. Back at 9.30am." As Zahedi had extolled the vital energy of the Lot, a river accessible by a property that houses the centre, I decided to take the plunge. Later in her studio, with a cup of verbena from her garden in her hands, Zahedi explained to me that playing the organ in the surrounding churches, to which she holds the keys, is her breakfast. She is attracted by this instrument, which can only be played after climbing inside the stone naves, and by its music "which accompanies the dead". Using her hands and feet to navigate the keyboards, she sees the doors to her brain opening.

 

It is essential for artists to have a quality critical text on their work. The Ekphrasis grants, launched by ADAGP in association with AICA France and Quotidien de l'Art, are designed to encourage this type of writing by putting 10 artists in touch with as many critics. The texts of the 10 winners of this second edition (each awarded €2,000, covering the writing of the text and its translation) are published throughout the year in Le Quotidien de l'Art, at the rate of one per month. In this tenth issue, Lillian Davies looks at the work of Aurélia Zahedi.

Zahedi grew up in central France. She studied visual arts in Avignon and then at Villa Arson, where her final project was a still life installation, Untitled (2012). On the immaculate lawn of the institution lay a dead goat attached to helium-filled balloons in a palette of brilliant pinks, oranges and greens. Although Zahedi doesn't see himself as a painter, his artistic approach is based on a pictorial framework, with the canvas and its challenges of light most often as the object.

 

To manipulate, even 'burn the light', Zahedi began using sequins back in 2013 with his installation Untitled, as part of the inaugural exhibition at Galerie Eva Vautier in Nice. Fish, presumably sea bass, changed every day and placed on a sea of silver glitter spread out on the floor. "I use sequins to make up for something that's difficult to look at," she explains, justifying her appropriation of a material that is as childlike as it is jubilant, for Paysages Désenchantés (2015). Zahedi applies it like paint to the canvases in this series. In each work, she depicts a dead animal with a tragic beauty that recalls the dramatic register of Angélica Liddell's productions. Almost hidden and embellished by a complex and dazzling composition, the shape of the animal melts into a feast of colours and reflections.

 

At the end of 2021, in a room at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nancy, amid works by Caravaggio and Rubens, Zahedi presented Tapis de fleurs (2013), an accumulation of silk or plastic flowers in faded colours, found in cemetery dustbins. The work adapts to the dimensions of the exhibition space. Increasingly concerned with context, Zahedi says she wants to exhibit in places of worship "where the sacred is already present." "The relic is the first form of exhibition," she asserts. In Nancy, as in Avignon, in the Church of the Célestins, her work "is surrounded by icons, the Virgin is not far away".

In her work with carrion, whether found in the forest or donated by friends or villagers, Zahedi defines her artistic gesture by "bringing it to light", in the manner of Jean-Henri Fabre. She sometimes refers to the 19th-century naturalist, philosopher and poet, known for his meticulous work combined with great freedom of interpretation, as in the case of certain anthropoids such as the sacred beetle. Inspired by his attention to detail, his discipline of gaze and his ability to observe and depict, Zahedi says "that's what being an artist is all about: telling a story".

 

In works such as Madame le Sanglier (2015), in which an animal skull is placed on a column dressed in glittering red fabric, or Danse macabre (2014), in which a dead tree branch is adorned with pigeon carcasses, we see the artist creating characters for her fantastical tales.

It is the Rose of Jericho that flourishes at the heart of Zahedi's work, a plant of 'modest beauty', nomadic and almost immortal, surrounded by legends. Some say it only flowers where the Virgin's feet have touched the ground. But the Virgin has probably never been to Jericho. With the support of the Fanak Fund, Zahedi is currently preparing a trip to Palestine where she will work with Bedouins to imagine the route the Virgin Mary might have taken if she had passed through this city, which was part of the Roman Empire, then the Umayyad Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire, and which is now divided by the conflicts of the West Bank. In preparation for this site-specific work, Zahedi is looking for images of the Virgin Mary's feet during her flight to Egypt. She wants to engrave her imaginary footprint on stones in the desert and then create a map of her path in French and Arabic. In Repos de la Sainte Famille by Orazio Gentileschi (1625-1650), the Virgin Mary's bare foot is visible and surprisingly large. In this composition, as the exhausted Joseph lies on their modest luggage, she has the strength to nurse the sacred child.

 

This moment of rest is important, because it is a state known as "dormancy", which the rose also goes through, only opening when it comes into contact with water. Zahedi resurrects the plant during his lecture series, or uses it, soaked in ink, to open a drawing, Réveils (2020). Zahedi is also looking for this "dormant state" at Maison Auriolles, a "house without an objective". After a distinguished career at institutions such as the Villa Arson, the Salon de Montrouge and the Quai Branly, Zahedi has decided to take a step back and seek an alternative path. "Maison Auriolles is a political act," explains the artist. There, Zahedi lives with a choir leader, an actress, a farmer, a doctor and a young man who trains donkeys to work on organic farms. The doors to the house are always open. Around the table, visitors are frequent, whether to share their ideas or their bread. As soon as there's a ray of sunshine, the table is set alongside a pond covered with lotuses grown from the same bulbs as those at Giverny. The story goes that Monet harvested them from a nearby château. Zahedi plans to create a cemetery on the estate, as an open-air showcase for his growing collection of carrion. It will be a cemetery that makes death visible, a pretext for music, literature and theatre. 

 

Zahedi's voice can be heard regularly on local radio in his programme, "La Nef des Fous". The title is borrowed from the tale by Sébastien Brant (1494) and illustrated in the eponymous painting by Jérôme Bosch (1490-1500), the story of a motley crew of jubilant heretics at sea without a captain. It's a scene reminiscent of the one she composed at Maison Auriolles, a house that is "always damp. Here we float on water". Sailing towards death, Zahedi's work celebrates life.

 

Le Quotidien de l'Art, 10.11.2022