July 2023 to September 2023 and April 2024
Ahad Moslemi and Alice Mestriner are a duo of contemporary artists whose work deals with the study and construction of meanings that are changed or modified, lost or redefined over time. During the course of their fellowship, they created the work PARADEISOS: LAYERS OF MEMORY – a carpet woven out of dust.
Ahad Moslemi and Alice Mestriner began using dust as a raw material, metaphor and theoretical nodal point for their artistic practice back in 2017. PARADEISOS: LAYERS OF MEMORY will be presented at the Ethnologisches Museum in the Humboldt Forum as an intervention forming part of the exhibition Discovering the West, which explores Turkish and Persian perspectives on the West and highlights the power and resistance of appropriation and reinterpretation, the result of which is blending and transformation. A selection of transcultural objects served as source material for the artists. PARADEISOS addresses the nature of dust as a material – multifaceted and fragmentary in equal measure –, its manifold and at times contradictory associations. Given that dust is composed of fallen – ostensibly “dead” – matter, it is often regarded as a symbol of the transient. Yet this perspective fails to consider that dust is in fact very much alive and active, symbolising the persistence of life in a perpetual state of change. The two artists talk about dust as “plastic memory”. It signifies past, present and future life.
Alice Mestriner (born 1994, Treviso, Italy) commenced her studies in fine art in 2008 at the Liceo Artistico Statale in Treviso. In 2017, she completed her studies in multi-media art at the Iuav University of Venice. She also attended courses in cultural anthropology at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. In 2015, she travelled to Turkey as part of the Erasmus programme to study at Hacettepe University in Ankara, before concluding her studies with an internship in Quebec, Canada. She received an honourable mention in the Monochrome Photography Awards. In 2016, she worked together with Ola-Dele Kuku to organise the exhibition A Continuous State of Time at the 56th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.
Ahad Moslemi (born 1983, Tehran, Iran) embarked on his studies at the College of Fine Arts in Tehran in 1998. In 2011, he emigrated to Canada, where he continued his studies at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières in the department of plastic arts. He has participated in exhibitions and conferences in Canada, Mexico, Greece, Germany, the USA, Belgium and Portugal. In 2016, he received the Prix du Doyen for his project “Les Conséquences de la guerre sur les enfants” (The impacts of war on children). In the same year, he was invited to participate in a conference titled “A Continuous State of Time” at the 56th Venice Biennale alongside the artist Ola-Dele Kuku. In 2017, his work was included in an exhibition in North Adams, MA (USA) for the Prints Biennial.
As a duo, the artists took part in an Erasmus+ programme Mobility of Youth Workers “Social Inclusion Through Artistic Tools” in London in 2018. In 2020, they attended the course at Harvard University “Tangible Things: Discovering History Through Artworks, Artifacts, Scientific Specimens and the Stuff Around You”. In 2022, the pair completed their studies in fine arts at the Iuav University of Venice with the thesis “Plastic Memory and the Aesthetic of Immortality” (MA). In the same year, they took part in the COME2ART project “Introducing a collaborative scheme between artists and community members fostering life skills development and resilience through creative placemaking”, a European project jointly established by Erasmus+, KA2 and ΙΚΥ. In addition to their artistic research, they have also designed workshops and educational programmes for schools, universities and companies.
