Untitled, 2021

About SADEGH KHALIFE

Sadegh Khalife(b. 1983) is a self-taught painter born and based in Shushtar, Khuzestan province, in southwestern Iran, and the founder and director of Shavadoon Gallery. He has held several solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group shows and art festivals across the country including The 9th Fajr Festival of Visual Arts at Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (2016), and The 11th Annual Persbook Contemporary Art at Iranshahr Gallery, Tehran (2022). His most recent solo exhibition "Imagination Breaking" was held at Sareban Gallery, Tehran (2021). Khalifeh's keen interest in machinery as forms, and abundant references to systems and part-industrial hybrids in his visual language come from his 17 years of work in the industrial sector. Khalifeh's art is nurtured and guided by the collective memory of the local people who have witnessed turbulent times from the rapid industrialization of their land to the devastation of a long and tragic war and the deep marks left by these events on a once-rich and diverse environment and its famously warm and generous people. Khalife's deep environmental and social concerns are reflected in the endless tango of domination between the rigid, fuming bodies of manmade machines and structures and a large, formless piece of striped industrial canvas wrapping itself around them like a giant, voracious boa.