Audineh Asaf: Remember Me

September 5 – 26, 2024
Opening: Thursday, September 5, 6:00 — 8:00pm

Imagine living your life under constant threat in a place where expressing personal beliefs or living authentically could lead to imprisonment or execution. This is the reality for countless individuals plagued by oppressive regimes.

Audineh Asaf, a first-generation Iranian American, grew up hearing stories about loved ones who faced this kind of persecution in Iran before and after her family emigrated to the United States. These formative experiences shaped her identity and worldview, and continue to resonate in her work as she seeks to portray the ongoing struggle for freedom in Iran.

Asaf’s mixed-media tapestries examine injustice and Iranians’ fight for autonomy. Drawing inspiration from both Iranian and American textile traditions like American quilt making and Persian carpet weaving, she illuminates and humanizes the experiences of individuals who have faced unimaginable hardships. Her acrylic-transfer and fabric collages feature portraits of political prisoner and Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, poet and prisoner of conscience Mahvash Sabet, and other courageous figures such as slain protester Nika Shakarami and Dr. Aida Rostami, who was killed in 2022 for treating those injured during the uprising that erupted after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s mandatory hijab law and then died three days later.

Whenever you’re feeling captive, like a bird,
whenever you’re cornered, like a weary stranger,
whenever you’re lost, and see no way ahead,
thinking of home with joy but with no way there –
remember me.
—Mahvash Sabet

Asaf will offer 100 complimentary copies of Mahvash Sabet’s book of Prison Poems to gallery visitors during the opening. Sabet is currently imprisoned in Iran due to her religious beliefs; she was first detained in 2008, released in 2017 and arrested again in 2022, receiving another 10-year sentence. During her confinement, Sabet turned her experiences into poems, which she managed to smuggle out of prison through the bravery of the women of Iran. Remember Me takes its name from the title of one of Sabet’s poems.