On View: January 17 - March 1, 2022

Lexicon of Longing is a solo exhibition of artists' books and prints by Golnar Adili which grapple with deconstructing and reconstructing past traumas. Born in Virginia to activist parents fighting against the shah, Adili’s family migrated to Iran in the wake of the revolution. Growing up in post-1979 Tehran, in the face of seismic geopolitical shifts, Adili experienced uprooting and disconnection. Only two years after their resettlement in Iran, Iraq’s sudden attack on Iran tightened the Islamic Republic’s grip on any political opposition, catalyzing Adili’s father’s eventual escape back to the United States. Adili’s father was never able to return. This separation split Adili’s family for many years, ending only when she moved to the states to attend college. In her work, Adili is compelled to decode the ways in which these events have marked her.

As a visual thinker, Adili is interested in learning through comparison; making connections between similar shapes and events from varied contexts as the foundation upon which she builds her vast internal library of the world. Inspired by how her own child observes and archives information, Adili has infused her practice with play, using family photographs and language to reshape memory, experiences of displacement and identity. Forgetting and relearning both English and Persian multiple times has made language a fascinating reference in Adili's work. Persian poetry, as well as biographical text investigating a landscape of longing, have provided a valuable context for examining language formally. These investigations include physically building words and letters with a multitude of materials. In doing so, Adili uses architecture, book arts, and installation to distort and blur the lines between design, craft, and fine art.

Golnar Adili is a mixed media artist, educator, and designer with a focus on diasporic identity. She holds a master's degree in architecture from the University of Michigan and has attended residencies at the Rockefeller Foundation for the Arts (Bellagio, Italy), Center for Book Arts (NYC), Smack Mellon (Brooklyn, NY), Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (MA), MacDowell Colony (NYC), Ucross Foundation for the Arts (Clearmont, WY), Lower East Side Printshop (NYC), Women’s Studio Workshop (Rosendale, NY), and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace (NYC), among others. Adili has shown her work internationally; venues include: the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, UK), NURTUREart (Brooklyn, NY), Craft and Folk Art Museum (Los Angeles, CA), and International Print Center New York (NYC). She has received several grants, including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, NYFA Fellowship in Printmaking/Drawing/Artists Books, and the Jerome Hill Finalist Grant. Adili is a Jameel Prize finalist. Her artist books are in several collections, including the Library of Congress, Rutgers University, Yale University, and University of Michigan.

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