signs and symbols

Shaqayeq Arabi: Migrating Garden

NADA House 2023
Nolan Park House 18
Governors Island, New York  

September 1 - October 1, 2023        

Opening Day:
Friday, September 1, 2023
2:00 - 5:00pm

signs and symbols is delighted to present Migrating Garden, a site-specific installation by Shaqayeq Arabi for NADA House 2023. The installation comprises suspended sculptures that, together, compose a dynamic landscape in the air, responding to wind or the movement of visitors. Made of various organic and manmade materials, such as local twigs and mesh, the installation considers the shifting relationships and tensions between fragility and resilience, structure and flexibility, nature and existence.

Arabi's large-scale and immersive environments typically combine found objects with natural elements, including metal mesh, wire, paper, film, glue, twigs, plants, wood and paint. Loosely held together or freely hanging, the individual components perform a tenuous balancing act, seeking an equilibrium between adaptation and stability. The natural materials in her work have a special resonance for the artist for their ability to bend yet resist external forces; an Iranian artist based between Dubai, Tehran and New York, Arabi's installations can also be seen as a metaphor for the precarity of living in the Middle East. Through her work, Arabi not only accepts but embraces the conditions in which she lives, finding inspiration in images of resilience in nature.

Arabi writes:

I am sculpting my personal landscape, born from the fabric of my fantasies, creating an environment that I enjoy being surrounded by — a realm I could have once inhabited in the distant past, an existence that might have slipped into the recesses of time, surviving within the echoes of distant memories. While the contours of my life are within the rhythm of contemporary issues, surrounded by the prevailing scenery of concrete expanses of big cities, the fragments of discarded lives, the byproducts of a culture of consumption, day-to-day issues of displacement, misplacement, the echoes of wars, and continuous uprooting and re-rooting.

I now find myself in a parallel situation that epitomizes the very essence of a migrating garden, again leaving behind something while I continue my journey. I cheerfully know that these works will transform and adopt new meaning, growing and flourishing in their new environment, evoking novel emotions, creating a whole new dimension within the spaces they now inhabit, always navigating the currents of change with a spirit that is both pliable and steadfast.

shaqayeq arabi is a painter, sculptor and installation artist. She was born in Tehran and divides her time between her hometown, Dubai, and New York City. Arabi’s work finds its point of departure in image, sound and smell, as well as the sensitivity of her surrounding environment. In sketching, composing and connecting accumulated fragments together, Arabi traces her reminiscences, creating a tangible and touchable reality out of emotions and sensations. Arabi received her Bachelor in Graphic Design from Al-Zahra University, Tehran, a BFA from University of Valencinnes, France and an MFA from Sorbonne University, Paris. She has had exhibitions in the Middle East, North America, and Europe — notably The Sea Was Far Away And The Sky Further, Farjam Foundation, Dubai; Roots, with Fereydoun Ave, Dastan Gallery, Tehran; Study of an Upturned Ziggurat, Dept. of Signs and Symbols, New York; and the Sculpture Biennale at Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.