06 Jan 2016

Shulamit Nazarian presents Elham Rokni: Clavileño

Shulamit Nazarian is pleased to announce Clavileño, a new exhibition that probes memory and the power of the mind from Iran-born, Israel-based artist Elham Rokni. The title video, Clavileño (2010), features a car driving in total darkness, a modern evocation of the famous journey that Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza take astride Clavileño, a wood peg horse that they are told can fly. Blindfolded, the pair believes that they are taking a transcendent flight through the air upon the grounded wooden vessel. Similar to the common pact in cinema and literature (and, perhaps as in art), where parties involved agree to enter another time or space, Clavileño takes the viewer on a ride. Adopting devices from film, literature, and abstract art to pique imagination and stir the soul, Rokni explores the dichotomies of truth and fantasy, disappearance and appearance, and light and darkness to uncover how these juxtapositions relate to consciousness and her experience as an immigrant.