Maryam Taghavi: Nothing Is

For the next iteration of its Chicago Works series, the MCA presents the first solo museum exhibition of artist Maryam Taghavi (b. Tehran, Iran; based in Chicago, IL).

Taghavi’s practice insists on positionality: where one stands determines what—and how—one sees. For the past several years, her work with talismans, calligraphy, and the Islamic occult has coalesced into a series of sculptures and paintings that strive to signify the unseen. In her upcoming MCA exhibition, Taghavi creates new works that expand her interest in perception by interrogating the space between the illusive vanishing point of the horizon and the immutability of distance.

Taghavi’s exhibition will take over the MCA’s Turner Gallery on the fourth floor, culminating in an immersive installation that invites audiences to close one eye and peer with the other, to adjust their gaze to new spatial possibilities, and to imagine a relationship with what is imperceptible.