Sahar Tarighi
- Editor at Titan Contemporary Publishing
- Sep 17
- 2 min read
Updated: Oct 7
Sahar Tarighi is a video and installation artist who has exhibited across the United States and in the United Kingdom, Canada, Iran, Turkey, and South Korea. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Berman Museum in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, Election Station Gallery in Elkton, Maryland, Duke Energy Convention Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Recitation Hall Gallery in Newark, Delaware. Sahar’s recent collective exhibitions include Mason Exhibitions Arlington in Virginia, Upper Gallery and Hopkins Hall Gallery in Columbus, Ohio, Ohio State University at Mansfield, ASR Art Gallery in Tehran, Iran and Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington. She has served as a visiting artist and lecturer at many institutions such as Cecil College Elkton Station in Maryland, Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, Berman Museum in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, and University of Delaware in Newark.
Often incorporating fiber and video into her installations, Sahar Tarighi’s art is essentially socio-political in nature and typically deals with collective Kurdish identity or conveying the purpose and value of civic rights. The artworks often invoke ancestral myths and traditions from her homeland. These biological configurations contained within the works, whether worm-like constructs or replicas of repeated fingers pointing to a screen or at the viewer, reveal a sense of discomfort and the artist’s desire to push the comfort zone and psychological boundaries of the audience.
Angular, distorted, and with confrontational shapes much like a razor’s edge or the biological shape of a leech, the installations offer a provocative narrative on how structures can be reconfigured to evoke conceptual thought based on interactions of asymmetrical forms. The viewer may notice patterns in the art which resemble braided hair, performative actions in video projections, and tapestries. These ‘gown-like’ forms seem to resemble traditional dress in an abstracted and exaggerated substance while the braided hair seems to convey self-portraiture or a reflection of innocence. The motifs contained within the works reflect mysterious symbolism which can be interpreted through a multitude of avenues through a socio-cultural and socio-political lens based on both Kurdish and Western standards of civilization.
Never Again III (pictured above) seems to communicate a collective trauma. The video installation contains a room with leech-like forms drooping from the ceiling. Upon entering, the viewer will find a variety of projections from geometric configurations to scenes of driving down a road during the rain as well as a depiction of bodies grasping in the air as if crying for help. The latter image appears to be suggestive of the title conveying a collective form of suffering.
With an investigative wit and a keen eye towards her own sense of culture, traditions, and identity, Sahar Tarighi creates art which has the viewer ponder upon the purpose of collective values. From collective suffering, reflections of childhood, notions of innocence, concepts based in representation, and the struggle to claim a homeland, Sahar Tarighi explores and communicates the will to express these concepts in symbolic physical form. Her works can be described to be a version of literature or poetry in visual substance, with a distinct narrative based in history, sociology, civics, and politics and how these fields of understanding relate to our collective identity.
