NEW YORK— The Guild Art Gallery is pleased to present, Metamorphosis, the New York debut show for artists Gazelle Samizay and Sa’dia Rehman. 

The works by the two artists dwell into the aesthetics of feminism and the psychology of the self. Samizay’s body of work explores the medium of video and photography while Rehman’s works are embodied in installation and drawing. 

An artist’s talk will be held in conjunction with the opening reception, moderated by Prof. Uzma Rizvi.

Uzma Rizvi is Assistant Professor in Anthropology and Urban Studies, in the Departments of Social Science and Cultural Studies, and Critical and Visual Studies, Pratt Institute. Based out of Brooklyn since 2002, her creative work spans performance/theater, documentary, and radio. She is on the board of SAWCC (South Asian Women's Creative Collective), an active committee member of SATAM (South Asian Theater Arts Movement) and is part of Visible Collective. She has acted as curator and has written about art, activism and social change. Since receiving her doctorate from the Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania in 2007, Rizvi has been Faculty Fellow and Chair for the Initiative on Art, Community Development and Social Change at the Pratt Center (2006-2008) and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at Stanford University (2008-2009).

Gazelle Samizay is an artist who works predominantly in video and photography.  Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and now residing in the United States, Samizay’s work explores the intersection of her Afghan heritage and American upbringing.  Her photographs and videos have been exhibited across the US and internationally, including Brazil, Colombia, Pakistan, Peru, and the UK.  In addition to her studio practice, she has taught courses in Afghanistan, Jordan and the U.S.  She is a recipient of the Princess Grace Experimental Film Honoraria, the Peter Treistman Creative Project Award, and the Centennial Achievement Award, among others.  Currently, she is pursuing her Master’s in Fine Arts at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

About Samizay’s work, Rizvi writes in her essay also titled ‘Metamorphisis’: explains:

The almost confessional struggle against sexual expectations mired in politically charged visual registers is bound by the frustrated beauty of Gazelle Samizay’s video work ‘Upon my Daughter’. The static culminating image, Upon my Daughter - 7 (2010), sets the tone for the other stills from the video in the series: a vision in white, the body of the woman is wrapped and bound in the wedding dress as funeral shroud. Playing with two cultural icons of suicide, the image resurrects stories of Ophelia and of the shaheed (the martyrs) from a time of war. Combining these narratives, Samizay proffers a cultural critique on the institution of marriage and on the construction of imaginaries in war-torn immigrant and refugee communities.

At The Guild, the artist will present a video work as well as photographs that explore the cultural expectations of Afghan American women with the tradition of marriage, in particular the expectation of the mother from her daughter. 

Sa'dia Rehman (b.Queens, NY) has shared her work internationally and nationally at venues such as Queens Museum of Art, Exit Art, and Grey Noise Gallery. She has participated in residencies at the Bronx Museum of Art (2008) and National Gallery of Art, Islamabad, Pakistan (2006). Her works on paper and installations are inspired by traditions influenced by religion, culture, and social anxieties within her family's Pakistani community. 

Rehman explores her own personal history and experiences in her installations and drawings. Rizvi writes:

In a direct, swift, and shocking moment, the sculptural installation Divine Guidance (2010), shifts our attention to forms of lynching. The playful pretty nature of the many layered skirts, swinging in the breeze, provides a sweet gesture, bringing the viewer into familiar shadows of party dresses. And yet, the figures hang from the soles of their feet, legs splayed, and in one case, vagina split with hair and tinsel. The awkwardness of the child-like aperture decorated for attention, and our discomfort in the realization that once again, the viewer’s gaze reinstates the violence of losing an aspect of life, highlights Rehman’s strength in this show: illustrating the quietness of brutal and coercive acts. The subtlety with which her subject matter integrates with her choice of material, illustration, and sculptural form creates the uncanny that resists protection and demands acknowledgement. 

Rizvi captures the essence when she writes: 

The study of human behavior under highly unusual circumstances is often how absurdist fiction is understood.  This genre highlights the ambiguity of characters, indirect narratives, and the constant flux of meaning that leave us in interpretive spaces that are inherently subjective. The works in this show, much like Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, create protagonists who continue to move through the everydayness of life, while a poison slowly kills them from within. Drawing us into their narratives, both Sa’dia Rehman and Gazelle Samizay, launch their critiques of the systems of control and violence that continue to transform women’s lives around the world. If only we could claim that this was just absurdist fiction too.