Selene Print

Shabnam Parvareshs works deliver a powerful, yet subtle, insight into the mindset of an independent woman stuck in a society worn out from decades of ideological tugging war and its devastating consequences concerning freedom of expression, agility, and reflection. While often exposed to governmental censorship, painting can bring relief under these grief conditions offering a pressure outlet in a society. Shabnam's paintings are like music on canvas, with this one, slight difference being - they are not over after 2,5 minutes. This comparison might sound strange, if it wasn't for the fact, that Shabnam is a musician too, a clarinetist. Felt rhythms, heard and unheard songs and sounds, textures touched and smelled, feelings that spring, listen, live, thrive, explode and in the end improvise their position within the discourse of reality, a reality experienced with all the senses. A reality that oftentimes proved tough in Iran, a reality of censored words, images, beliefs, and lifestyles. Silent on the surface, hurricanes on the inside, the canvas turned into a medium, strong as a whisper, heard with eyes. (Natalia Mateo) "I always express my creative energy through two different channels. One being music and other being painting, but maybe they are not so different after all... In my paintings, I try to visualize the sounds that I hear and to materialize them on the canvas. The rhythms that I imagine provide the compositions on which I improvise. In my home Iran, sometimes painting was the only way to express my feelings silently on the outside, but very loudly on the inside..." sh_2020 (2)_sw.jpg Shabnam Parvaresh is a clarinetist, artist and curator from Tehran, Iran. She studied fine arts in Tehran and then started her musical career after studying clarinet privately in the Tehran Symphony Orchestra. In 2013, she left Iran to study jazz clarinet at the Osnabrück Institute of Music. In her musical work, she takes an exploratory approach that combines elements from Persian music with electronic sounds, improvised music and jazz to create a new musical aesthetic on the clarinet. As a solo musician, she has performed with Grammy Award-winner Kinan Azmeh, among others, and performed as a soloist at the invitation of the European Clarinet Association. In 2020, she formed her Sheen Trio, whose debut album Gozar will be released in the spring of 2023 on Berthold Records label.