Instruments of Viewing and Obscurity

A fearless interdisciplinary artist, working across drawing, sculpture, installation, architecture, and video, Nazgol Ansarinia brings together a compelling set of practices converging toward a new stream of critical materialism (and minimalism) in contemporary art from the Global South.

Her work opens new fields of investigation on the complexities of public infrastructure development. It also evokes the subjective memory—visual forms appealing to the viewer’s touch or bodily presence—hidden behind different strategic raw materials.

Nazgol Ansarinia’s project or psychovisual complex Instruments of Viewing and Obscurity begins with a meticulous inquiry into the mass housing brutalist architecture and buildings of Tehran—with its extensive use of concrete and fossil fuels energy to toxic effect.

Instruments of Viewing and Obscurity manifests itself through dusted visions, sedimented forms, and ethereal apparitions—tracing invisible connections between brutalist architecture in Iran, post-minimal art, psychology of the masses, and Michel Foucault’s panopticon surveillance model. The installation questions the invisible disruptions of global infrastructures, shedding light on the interdependence of our resources, urbanization, and habitats.

- Morad Montazami, director of Zamân Books & Curating, excerpt “Nazgol Ansarinia: Between Critical Materialism and Critical Minimalism”