MARATHON SCREENINGS is a series of salon-style film & video presentations that invites international and LA-based artists to share their work and engage in meaningful dialogue. The program includes films that range from short, conceptual videos to feature-length experimental documentaries, in addition to performances and lectures. The films discuss issues surrounding individual identity, representation, and historical consciousness in a shifting geopolitical landscape.
Note from the Curator: What began as an intimate gathering in my living room has since grown to include a roving series hosted by art-loving individuals in their homes, nonprofit art spaces, and now Zoom. The series was born from a casual conversation and a desire to give video art the platform it deserves. It has since grown to accommodate a growing appetite for presenting talented and challenging work in a non-hierarchical environment. With an emphasis on engaged, organic conversations, the screenings took place around a communal dinner, and plenty of wine. While Covid-19 has removed this wonderful feature, it has since introduced a new opportunity to connect with moderators and participants from all over the world. I look forward to reconnecting with all of you in person, but until then let’s savor this sliver lining and consider what we can do to make this world a more welcoming and safe home for everyone. Happy New Year!
The series is produced by LA-based curator Asha Bukojemsky. BIO here.
To be added to the mailing list: marathonscreenings@gmail.com
P/ainting in the U.S.A., 2018, single-channel HD video, sound. 30min
P/ainting in the U.S.A. (working title) In her most recent video work, Shagha Ariannia investigates the performance of American patriotism through a layered composition of painting and YouTube videos. Setting the scene is a painted depiction of an artist’s studio, which Ariannia replicated from an Iranian pre-revolutionary music video. (Pol (The Bridge) by Googoosh, 1975). The staged backdrop, heavily influenced by modernist aesthetics, carries with it the aspiration for Western ideologies. Through the painted copy, Ariannia reimagines the desire of her parent’s generation while also relocating it within her own narrative of displacement. The painted scene is then layered with a compilation of American YouTube painting tutorials, demonstrating how to paint the American Flag. The two scenes blend together and become a fictionalized landscape, where the collective performance of American patriotism is both gently and violently demonstrated over Ariannia’s painting.
Born and raised in Iran, Shagha Ariannia is an interdisciplinary visual artist whose work explores the complex landscape of nationhood through questions of citizenship, national identity, global power relations and the fantasy of immigration. As a post 9/11 Iranian immigrant to the United States, Ariannia regards political and cultural identity as a site on which to play and struggle. Through drawings, paintings and video, she considers the ironies of war, participation in state-sanctioned ideologies, and the Du Boisian notion of "double consciousness”. Her works have been exhibited at the Vincent Price Art Museum, University of California Irvine; LAXART; 18th Street Art Center; Commonwealth and Council; the Torrance Art Museum (all in Los Angeles); Galarie der Hochschule, Braunschweig, Germany; and Gallery MOMO, Capetown. She received her MFA from CalArts and BA from the University of California, Irvine. She is a 2016 recipient for the California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists.
