The exhibition VALLEYS OF THE SIMORGH emerged from the INTRA project with the same title and, inspired by the Persian poet Attār‘s Conference of the Birds, embarks on the quest for the Simorgh. Following the structure of the tale, the exhibition consists of the Valley of the Quest (Ahmadjan & Maren Amini), Valley of Love (Tanja Boukal), Valley of Knowledge (Monika Huber), Valley of Detachment (Ali & Maheen Kazim), Valley of Unity (Anahita Razmi), Valley of Wonderment (Mohsin Shafi), and Valley of Poverty and Annihilation (Farkhondeh Shahroudi). This exhibition addresses the political sphere of Attār’s narration while it recounts the collective struggle for freedom and equality.
ARTISTS
AHMADJAN AMINI was born in Malaspa in the Panjshir Valley, Afghanistan and after attending school and graduating from the Afghan Institute of Technology in Kabul Ahmadjan traveled to Hamburg in order to become an artist. His adopted home was Hamburg for four years. There he attended the Rolf Laute Art school (founder of SCHLUMPER) and was a guest student at the University of Fine Arts. In 1978 he had to return to Afghanistan and was immediately forced into military service under Daud. The civil war that soon began and the Soviet invasion finally caused him, like so many of his compatriots, to leave his homeland in 1980. Since then, he has lived in Hamburg and at the end of the 80s he studied computer graphics at the Institute for Computer Graphic Design in Hamburg. The diploma he acquired opened up new professional and artistic perspectives for him.
MAREN AMINI is an illustrator living in Hamburg, Germany. She completed her studies in illustration and communication design at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences in 2009. Maren loves to make people laugh or smile by her work. She emphasizes that it is easier to open up to difficult, sad or dry topics with humor. And once you laugh at a picture from the bottom of your heart, it stays with you forever. Maren Amini draws for magazines such as Spiegel, Zeit, Stern and companies such as the Fraunhofer Institute, Hamburg Wasser and Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG. She also has her own cartoon section in Chrismon magazine.
TANJA BOUKAL lives and works in Vienna. She studied stage design at Wiener Kunstschule and embroidery at HBLA Herbststraße. Her work has been exhibited in art institutions such as Kunstverein Augsburg, Museum der Moderne Salzburg and Wien Museum MUSA. People build the center of her work – their interactions with the environment and society, and their responses to challenging situations. Rather than focusing on the details of their faces or bodies, her interest lies in understanding their abilities when confronted with unique life circumstances. She delves into their methods of problem solving, their determination to achieve goals, and their pursuit of finding happiness.
MONIKA HUBER lives and works in Munich, Germany. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts under Prof. Günter Fruhtrunk. Since 2011 she has been working on her Archiv Einsdreissig, which has been shown widely in the form of photographic works, videos and installations, including at the Haus der Kunst München, Maximiliansforum München, Grassi Museum Leipzig, Landesmuseum Stuttgart, Kunsthaus/ Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Museo Macro Asilo Rom, Kunstverein Rosenheim, Kunstverein Tiergarten Berlin and at the Pinakothek der Moderne München. In 2023, the Archiv Einsdreissig / Archive OneThirty was published by Deutscher Kunstverlag / De Gruyter.
ALI KAZIM lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan. He received his BFA degree from the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan in 2002 and an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK, in 2011. Kazim has worked in the field of visual arts since 2002. His work is in the collection of the Tate, UK; British Museum UK; Victoria and Albert Museum UK; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Metropolitan Museum NYC; Asia Pacific Museum, USA; Rose Art museum, USA; Queensland Art Gallery Australia; Qatar Museums, Qatar; Burger Collection Hong Kong; Creative Cities Collection, Beijing; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, India; Devi Art Foundation, Delhi, India; Samdani Foundation, Dhaka; Durjoy Foundation, Dhaka ; Kemal Lazar Foundation, Tunisia, Islamabad Airport, Pakistan.
MAHEEN KAZIM is a Pakistani textile designer and educator based in Lahore, Pakistan. With a background in teaching weaving design at the Pakistan Institute of Fashion Design, where she served as a Lecturer, Maheen has developed her skills in creating artisanal weavings using a diverse range of materials and color palettes. Her design studio and handloom serve as creative spaces where she experiments with textile patterns for woven production, explores artistic possibilities, and collaborates closely with local community weavers in Kasur, a town on the outskirts of Lahore. In her ongoing project, she aims to revitalize the fading tradition of handloom weaving in Kasur by engaging with local weavers and inspiring young artisans to learn and practice the craft.
ANAHITA RAZMI is a German-Iranian artist who works with installation, performance and moving images. In her transcultural artistic practice she often employs strategies of appropriation and contextual displacement to deconstruct relationships between image and power and identity and representation. Razmi‘s works have been shown in international institutions such as the Museo Jumex in Mexico City, Halle 14 in Leipzig, the Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the Kunstraum Innsbruck in Austria, the Sazmanab Centre for Contemporary Art in Tehran, the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, the National Art Center in Tokyo, the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart as well as at the 7th Çanakkale Biennial and the 5th Bucharest Biennale. In addition to other international art prizes and grants, Razmi has received a scholarship from the Tarabya Cultural Academy, Istanbul (2020/2023), the Goethe at LUX Residency, London (2018), the MAK-Schindler Scholarship, Los Angeles (2013) and the Emdash Award, Frieze Foundation, London (2011).
MOHSIN SHAFI Mohsin Shafi is a South Asian, Pakistan based artist, whose work is informed by his born-and-raised-Pakistani encounters and dissident musings through elegies to familial and cultural history. He primarily engages local narratives from the Indian subcontinent, examining collective and respective chronicles of longing, yet not belonging. His practice encompasses chaos and conflicts around navigating culture and identity; transgression and transfiguration of masculinity and gender crossover; articulating territorial struggles of sexuality within religious and spiritual subcultures; the clash of social norms and individual aspirations; the fantasies and anxieties between attachment and disaffection, beliefs and manifestations, hate and love. Shafi holds a Master’s Degree in visual arts and Bachelor’s Degree in visual communication both from the oldest school of art in Pakistan, the NCA Lahore.
Press release from Hinterland
Image: Installation view of The Valleys Of The Simorgh at Hinterland. 2024. Photography by Jakob Lindner. Image courtesy of the artists and Hinterland
