Mamali Shafahi's work, whether through sculpture, video, installation or virtual reality, is marked by the preponderant place of new technologies in our lives and in art. By integrating them into his work, the artist questions our relationship to these new processes and puts us at risk of losing the link with traditional ancient cultures and the tales and legends that stem from them.
Since his beginnings, the artist has also shown a real sensitivity to the idea of transmission, particularly through genetics. Thus, ten years ago, he persuaded his father Reza to start drawing, even though he had no artistic inclination, in order to detect a potential common creative gene. Reza, since this experience, has developed his own practice and has become an important artist in Iran. Always in the idea of transmission, Mamali Shafahi associates his parents as artists, actors or virtual characters of his works. He thus reverses the role of the artist who loses control at the expense of the participant. By this process, he questions the transformations in the filial relations. In his recent works, Mamali Shafahi integrates the iconography of his father's drawings and paintings with reliefs and immersive installations populated with fantastic chimeras. A true intergenerational and intercultural dialogue, this production allows to build a bridge between the traditional Iranian aesthetics born from poetry, legends and miniatures, and the contemporary globalized culture. The artist becomes a true storyteller and allows the viewer to freely interpret these works according to his past and his culture. The imagination, by being solicited, allows to wake up the magic and marvelous worlds which sleep in each of us. Mamali Shafahi is an Iranian filmmaker and artist born in 1982. He lives and works between Paris and Tehran. He is a graduate of the École nationale supérieure d'arts de Paris-Cergy and the University of Art in Tehran. His works have been exhibited at various biennials, such as in Athens, Tehran, Istanbul, Vancouver or Berlin.
In 2019, he made an installation for the Palais de Tokyo as part of the exhibition "Prince.sse.s des villes". Mamali Shafahi is represented by the Dastan Gallery in Tehran and the Mitterand Gallery in Paris. His work was presented at Frieze Los Angeles in September 2022. His first solo exhibition at Mitterand Gallery, "Deep Throats: Go deeper" is on view through October 29, 2022.