Nina Ghanbarzadeh

Composition #16
Acrylic on frosted Mylar
36 x 36 in.

Nina Ghanbarzadeh lives between two cultures, American and Persian. To escape the mental exhaustion of constant comparison and translation, she uses text as a vehicle for questioning perception in her art. When meaning is removed from language it becomes unclear if it is meant to be seen or read. At the intersection of text and image, Ghanbarzadeh explores writing as composition and mark making. The marks that she puts on paper originate from simplifying written language into basic shapes. These new shapes express a universal language that people will relate to regardless of the language that they may speak. Each piece in this series began with written words that were then redacted into basic gestures, appearing abstract. The use of abstraction is important because it allows these words to be free of the need of being translated or interpreted, liberating both artist and viewer beyond the concerns of legibility or meaning usually associated with language. The works in this series have simply been named “compositions” and were then numbered to show their experimental evolution over time. The artist thinks of these compositions as not quite paintings and not quite drawings, but as something in between like the artist

© Nina Ghanbarzadeh