HEMISPHERES

"The left brain: logic, language, structure. The right: intuition, emotion, imagination, play. As a news presenter, I live by structure—scripts, schedules, certainty. But there’s another side that doesn’t get much airtime. The side that’s impulsive, colourful, and often quiet. I make art to stay connected to that hemisphere.

This show brings both sides into view. Some works begin with my printed news scripts—pages usually discarded minutes after broadcast. The scripts carry English titles for the production crew, but the body of the text—the part I speak on air—is written in the flowing cursive of Farsi. I later draw freely over these pages, letting colours and shapes surface without instruction—as if remembering something I never quite saw clearly. Certain shapes travel across the exhibition: from the script drawings to paper cut-outs, into ceramic plates that echo hemispheric forms, with their unilateral patterns and asymmetries. They’re glazed and can be used functionally, but they can also be read as abstract paintings. They also appear in sculptural vessels I call Curved Angles—playful forms that seem to lean, pause, or shift mid-thought, solidified in clay. They speak to how we hold opposing tensions through sometimes strange balancing acts. There’s a strange tension in how things register.

News often moves fast—too fast—but some events don’t pass so easily. They stay with you. In times like these, colour, rhythm, and form become a way to stay present—when language feels too heavy or too far away. I live between hemispheres: between roles, languages, and materials. This work is a way of letting both sides speak—and sometimes, speak back to each other. These ideas have been evolving quietly over the past two years. And though the world outside feels increasingly volatile—especially for those of us watching events unfold from afar—now feels like the right moment to let this work be seen. Not as an escape from those tensions, but as a way to stay grounded within them." Parizad Nobakht