Premio Combat Prize

Navid Azimi Sajadi is Iranian and based in Rome.Born in Tehran, he gained a bachelor of art in
painting from Tehran Art and Architecture University, in 2005 and moved to Italy in the same year.
In 2009, he was announced the winner of the Imprendilarte Art Prize at the Modigliani Institut
Archives Légales Paris-Rome and graduated from Accademia di Belli Arti di Roma. In 2013, he gained
his Master of Fine Art in Multimedia Sculpture from Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, and was invited to
the 9th Shanghai Biennale. Since 2014 he has worked extensively as an artist with organisations
in Iran, Italy and Turkey.
Navid’s work reviews his experience in-between two cultures. He has developed an esoteric
languague of signs and symbols from multiple mythologies and histories. His multimedia works on
paper are composed of a symbolic language referencing ancient Babylonian sculpture,
seventeenth century Persian miniatures, European devotional art of the Renaissance and contemporary objects. He uses a combination of traditional materials, such as gouache, gold leaf and egg tempera, and cutting edge techniques such as laser print and photography. His works bring together Eastern geometry and a Western
celebration of the body as he seeks parallels between his two cultures. His works explore the tensions, traumas and fears inherent in our society through the exploration of the religious and the sexual.
The juxtaposition and interaction of the body, history and mythologies in his images, create a multi-layered interactive space in what we read as the contemporary.
Education:
2013 MFA Multimedia Sculpture, Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, Italy
2009 Diploma di Academia di Belle Arti di Roma , Rome, Italy
2005 BA Painting, Azad Art University, Iran
selected shows:
2018- Eisegesis, Pejman Foundation, Curated by Sohrab Kashani, Tehran, Iran (upcoming sholo show)
2018- DEEV, chiesa di San Seveo al pendio in collaboration with A01 Gallery & Matronato Fondazione Donnaregina for contemporary art, curated by Marina Guida, Napoli,Italy (solo show)
2018-Drawing Room, A01gallery, Madrid. Spain
2017- Transmogrifies, A01 Fine art gallery, curated by Marina Guida, Napoli, Italy(solo show)
2016- Cica Museum international art contest, Gimpo, south Korea
2015- Hybridization, Madder Red & Amir Mohtashemi Gallery, curated by Dalya Islam & Farah Hakemi, London, UK
2015- Museo Bilotti Ruggi d’Aragona, New permanent collection opening, Rende (CS), Italy
2014- ODDO, Azad Art Gallery, Tehran, Iran (solo show)
2014- Recalling The Future( post revolutionary Iranian Art ), Brunei Gallery, curated by Aras Amiri, London, GB
2014- The Rose and Nightingale, curated by Maneli Keykawousi, Jamm Gallery, Dubai
2013- Speaking from the heart, curated by Shaheen Merali, Framer Framed, Amsterdam, NL

2013- XXcrossing over, Palazzo Bevilacqua, curated by Olivia Spatola & Eli Sassoli De Bianchi, Bologna, Italy (solo show)
2013- Serafini della tortura, Studio Eos, (in collaboration with Donatella Spaziani, Piero Varoni), Rome, Italy (solo show)
2012- Camouflage, Contemporary Concept Galley, curated by Olivia Spatola Bologna, Italy (solo show)
2012- OlcayArt Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey (solo show)
2012 - M.U.S.P.A.C(Museo sperimentale arte contemporanea), curated by Martina Sconci, Aquila, Italy (solo show)
2012 -The 9th Shanghai Biennale, Tehran pavilion, Shanghai, China

2012 - Artbeat istanbul, Olcayart Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey
2012 -Special preview of emerging Iranian art, Buhl & Amin collection, New York, USA
2011 -The Iranian Weltanschauung, curated by Shaheen Meralli, Freies Museum, Berlin, Germany
2011 -AL-GHAIB, Maraya Art Center, Sharjah, UE

2011 -MOP CAP 2011 Shortlist exhibition at Traffic gallery, Dubai
2011- Ottagono, Xenia 2011 featured artist( Elena Petruzzi collection), Pescara, Italy (solo show)
2010 - Barakat, STUX Gallery, Curated by Gaia Serena Simionati, New York,USA
2009 - False Flags, Azad Art Gallery,Tehran, Iran (solo show)
2008- PH7 Art Gallery, Rome, Italy (solo show)
2009 - Palazzo Taverna Modigliani Institut Archives Le`gales Paris, Rome, Imprendi l arte Art Prize , Rome, Italy
2008 - Palazzo Venezia (Sala del Mappamondo), L`arte di amare l`arte, curated by Fondazione Citta Italia, Rome, Italy
2006 - The 4th International Biennial of the Islamic World, Tehran, Iran

Artist statement:
I have been living in between two cultures and this situation forced me to continuously deal with cross-cultural codes: my work reflects this very peculiar condition. My research aims at manipulating the meaning of images, forms and memories and I play with the received wisdom of how those elements interact, thus creating a metaphorical ambient where viewers can be guided through a wide array of significances by indicators of time and spaces. My art can be considered a glimpse into a crossroad where present events meet history and mythology.
To create this temporal passage, I make use of different media including photography, drawings, and installations often organized around a minimal aesthetic and symbolic language. In my studio practices, I experiment with different materials to give different significance to my work. The main body of my work is normally formed through these practices where the choice of materials for each subject becomes part of the identity of the subject itself. The elements I choose come from materials like handmade paper, felt, wood, enamel, resin, and natural materials. I also use objects or images (which have had a special historical and cultural meaning) that I have collected and amassed during the years I lived in Iran and Europe. Ideally, I find myself looking for smiliarities between cultures, exploring the concept of diversity (cultural, religious or sexual) and combining the heritage of the Middle Eastern, Persian and the Western world. By blending materials I feel that I am blending and combining the Persian esoteric literature, religious & mythological references, from the ancient world to our present time, with its tensions, traumas, fears inherent in our contemporary society, and digesting it to create a the metaphorical visual space. My hope is to create an aesthetic language using various cultural and visual references with one or more meanings in different cultures, and to compose a visual maze that leaves space to the free interpretation of the observer.
The connection between my ideal process and my studio practice , it leads me to create a pantheon of objects and images, these images point to a more layered, carnivalesque reading of the two traditions, traditional/ancient and contemporary culture, but in emphasizing the delicate fictional underpinning in these images, they come closer to representing “reality” than what is shown in most news media.
In my work the juxtaposition and interaction of material power, spiritual power, and the unavoidable historically repeated consequence of this conjunction create a multi-layered space underlining a state of contradiction and exposure of violence.
The synthesis of seemingly opposing ideological and aesthetic agendas and signifiers – politics and poetics, the mythological and the historical, the conceptual and the baroque, shape shifting & holy stiffness, harmony and destruction, and the resurrection of eternal shadows and gods and idols of orient and occident contribute to a kind of convoluted narrative. This polyphonic visual language reveals the ways in which these often-contradictory notions and relationships shape the contemporary worlds.
Navid Azimi Sajadi