LEILI TEHRANI WALKER
NAARM (MELBOURNE), AUSTRALIA
Leili’s first solo show is as much an exercise in solidifying identity as it is uncovering the elusive rewards of being neither here nor there. Born to an Iranian mother and Australian father, their experience of belonging is spread between the lascivious club-lined streets of Sydney’s red-light district and their ancestral homeland of Iran. The stark dichotomy—of neon arabesques—goes beyond geography; it is embodied, absorbed corporeally, psychologically, existentially. Each painting, then, is a bricolage of ephemera, people, stories, and talismans, recalled from a life lived between place and between self. The collection is composed to offer a different vision—of diffuse realities converged—of what it is to have this cultural heritage.
For Leili, thinking about what it means to belong, of finding a place where identity is reified and recognised by the people around them has always required engaging in abstractions. Being Persian-Australian and trans they radiate a level of ambiguity that eludes the homogenising function of binaries—too brown for Australia, too Western for Iran. Although their university degree in mathematics and philosophy has helped cultivate ideas on what it means to manipulate and play with objects in extended dimensions, the institutionalised pursuit of knowledge pushed them towards art.
- Fareed Kaviani
The 4th Wall
www.the4thwall.net
Photography : Michael Hurren (Filmic Productions)