The New Commons [part 1] : SHAGHAYEGH CYROUS

Recorded on October 14, 2023, witness the insightful conversation between Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai, a curatorial fellow at Prospects Art, and Iranian-American artist Shaghayegh Cyrous in the first episode of The New Commons series. During the live event, we screened four of Cyrous' works: "Walk in the Future of my Past," "No Smell, No Touch," "Be Yad Ar (Remember)," and "Golden Hour." All these pieces are available for viewing until July 2024.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Shaghayegh Cyrous (www.shcyrous.com) is an Iranian-American transdisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. Her work examines cross-cultural, multi-modal communications, especially highlighting the nuanced expatriate experience engendered by geopolitical shifts and their distorted notions of time and space. Commonly working with mediums such as video, interactive installation, photography, and painting.

Cyrous earned an M.F.A. in social practice at California College of the Arts and a B.F.A. in visual arts from the Science and Culture University of Tehran. Cyrous received an honoree award for Culturally Diverse Women “ Making a Difference” in 2023 alongside Mayor Karen Bass in Los Angeles from Cultural Inclusion Foundation and is a Gold Art Prize nominee in 2021. She has exhibited and performed internationally at venues such as Tehran MOCA, the British Museum in London, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, Institut für Alles Mögliche, Berlin, Germany, Anchorage Museum in Alaska, and Salesforce Tower in San Francisco.

ABOUT THE SERIES

The New Commons is a series of online screenings, virtual live collaborations and discussions around the imaginaries of the homeland as they are shaped by digital communication technologies, such as instant messaging apps, video calls, social media and the constant exchanges of videos and images whether personal or throughout the internet. In pairing works from diasporic artists and those from their homeland, the series seeks to portray the active and collective imagination around the construction of place and sense of belonging while revealing deeply embedded social and political disparities across the world. Historically, the term 'commons' is used to refer to natural resources, belonging equally to a community, a nation, a culture.

The 'new commons' designates the common digital space of the internet that has become the new foundation of our global transnational and transgenerational culture. This series is created and presented by our 2023/2024 Curatorial Fellow, Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai.