Soo Community No. 9

Soo Community No. 9

There is no such thing as just “Landscape”. /Julie Morato

The beginning of spring is tied to the image of nature and the image of nature to the landscape and the landscape to the political matter. This entanglement of the political with the landscape means that our encounter with even the most obvious image (i.e. nature) is an encounter affected by the phenomenon in which it is taking place: when we look at a natural landscape, we see it with all background, we look at our cultural, historical, ethnic and racial perceptions. This is why our judgment and understanding of the landscape image are affected by all the events that we experience in our daily lives. Events that can be summarized as “the influence of cultural, social and political systems on the natural”.

The vitrine of a gallery is an intersection place between realized art and public and social matter. The vitrine is an implicit invitation to the citizen to enter the picture. A dialogue and a call from formalized art to contemporary art. This year, under the pretext of the New Year, Soo Contemporary decorated the vitrines facing Poumousa Street with pictures of the landscape. Three images, the spirit governing each of them, in a mild way, and with that soft expression of the artistic voice, emphasized the politicization of the natural. And each according to his own needs.

Vanousheh pixelated print of the flowers and plants she had painted in the last few years and installed it inside one of the windows on the first floor of the building. Mojan Yaghoubi painted the peripheral lines of his flowers and plants on the glass in such a way that one of his paintings was encompassed in the center of the image. Hadi Sadeghipour had connected the corridor window of the first and second floors with a banner from one of his paintings titled The Landscape so that right in the space between the banner and the glass, a tree branch with a swing protrudes from the gallery wall.

In all these images, something has been manipulated, it has distanced itself from its previous familiarity and poses a question: “What is the landscape like today?”

Shirin Gharavisky (Tehran, Iran) is the founding director of Soo Contemporary. After finishing her university studies in Industrial Engineering and working on construction projects and project management in Iran, she moved to Toronto, Canada to pursue an artistic career and study art. There she studied at the Ontario College of Art & Design University (OCAD U) and obtained a BA degree in Fine Arts. In 2017, she returned to Tehran to establish an art gallery in the Iranian capital. As so, Soo Contemporary was founded in Tehran in 2017. 

Soo’s first venue, located in the north of Tehran, served as an interim space for two years while Shirin simultaneously managed a large renovation project at the current venue of Soo Contemporary in downtown Tehran. Under her direction, Soo showcases works and projects by some of the youngest generations of Iranian artists, fresh talents, cutting-edge media, and new genres, as well as promoting its spectrum of interest in more traditional media as well as emerging and more established artists. 

Soo Contemporary has become a space for artistic expression, having hosted more than 80 exhibitions that have brought together the talents of over 230 artists. In addition to her directorial role, Shirin has served as the curator for 10 exhibitions at Soo, promoting her perspective on contemporary art. 

Continuing these efforts, in 2020, her passion for art transcended conventional spaces as she founded Soo Community, an initiative that goes beyond the confines of a physical space. Soo Community has hosted 10 site-specific projects and events that focus on the underground currents in the Iranian art scene, connecting artists with a wider audience and making possible boundless artistic expressions. 

Establishment of Soo Contemporary Art Gallery

“Soo Contemporary” is a contemporary art gallery in Tehran, Iran. While mainly focusing on showcasing the youngest generations of Iranian artists, fresh talents, cutting-edge media and new genres, Soo also seeks to promote its spectrum of interest in more traditional media as well as emerging and more established artists.

With a multifaceted program that includes smaller-scale installations, site-specific projects, larger exhibitions, and multimedia and audiovisual events, Soo caters to the discerning audience base of Tehran’s vibrant art scene. Established in 2017 by director Shirin Gharavisky, after two years of working at an interim space in the northern neighborhoods of …
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