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October 2022, English
11×16 cm, 96 pages, 50 color and 8 b/w ill., Softcover with flaps
ISBN 978-1-915609-07-6
Series
imagine/otherwise
Design
Simon Josebury, SecMoCo
Copublisher
artPost21
Status
Available
Omar Kholeif

Sonia Balassanian

Edited by Rebecca Morrill

In this deeply personal portrait of Sonia Balassanian (b. 1942, Arak), an Iranian American artist of Armenian descent, author Dr. Omar Kholeif weaves together poetry, memoir, and historical anecdote to trace the contours of Balassanian’s world.

With a career spanning more than five decades, Balassanian is known for her multidisciplinary, politically charged practice that spans painting, poetry, photography, video, installation, performance, and drawing. At the heart of her corpus are colorful, large-scale, lyrically abstract paintings that she began in the 1960s. In the 1980s, after she had moved to New York, her work took a political turn following the Iranian Revolution. Balassanian drew newfound attention for Hostages: A Diary (1980), an installation of drawings that mapped the experience of following the Iran hostage crisis from the United States, and for Cauterized Literature (1987), a mixed-media series of burnt books mounted on canvas that comments on censorship in Iran.

Balassanian lives and works between New York and Armenia. This is the first comprehensive monograph of her art and life.

Series
imagine/otherwise presents critical biographies of underrepresented queer, non-binary, or female-identifying artists. Edited by Dr. Omar Kholeif and presented in collaboration with artPost21, the series emphasizes the concept of “female worlding” with books that serve as field guides into previously unexplored, overlooked, or inaccessible artistic lives. The overall proposition of the series (to “imagine” a world “otherwise”) stems from the desire to find a different way of writing and reading about art. Can art be examined unreservedly, unburdened of the limits imposed by the dominant hand of hegemony? Current editorial advisors for the series include Skye Arundhati Thomas, Zoe Butt, Carla Chammas, Alison Hearst, Sarah Perks and Sofia Victorino.
imagine/otherwise