New YorkMirmola Soraya

Shirin Gallery NY is pleased to announce an exhibition by Mirmola Soraya, Spontaneous Pattern. Showcasing the artist’s handcrafted carpets, the exhibition explores the concept of carpet-weaving as a contemporary art form. The large-scale works are informed by traditional weaving practices – that of precision and heavy ornamentation – and modern industrialization. Soraya investigates the social and historical role of the weaver, and challenges the definition of craft through the works’ form and installation.

Spontaneous Pattern is a group of Soraya’s recent works, each considering the artist’s ideas towards both the tedium of the handcrafted object, and the singular imagination of the weaver. In his own words, Soraya explains, “Sometimes my weaved images are rooted in stories long ago, which yet follow me today, and other times in an incident which awaits me in the future, lurking.” In many ways, Soraya describes an experience of the weaver much like that of a painter: beginning with the blank canvas. “I look at the weaved and see it as a ground to grow seeds of imagination,” he explains. As such, the work inhabits a sense of whim amongst its order. “Improvisation, spontaneity and intuition of shapes and images,” Soraya writes, are what leads to the works’ inception.

At the same time, the carpets employ a remarkable level of precision and method in their arrangement. The technique and artistic practice required to produce such works becomes habitual, which is revealed in the unfolding patterns of each piece. Soraya balances the structure of this craft with his own artistic freedom.

Mirmola Soraya (b. 1978, Ramsar, Iran) is a Tehran-based artist and designer. After receiving BA’s from both Azad University, Esfahan, and Miras University, Tehran, in Handmade Carpets and Handicraft, respectively, he began exhibiting his work in solo exhibitions throughout Iran, as well as internationally at galleries in cities such as Dubai and Kuwait. He also participated in group exhibitions in Tehran and New York. This is his first solo exhibition in New York.