Roksana Pirouzmand: a land to fall asleep

François Ghebaly New York is proud to present a land to fall asleep, Los Angeles-based artist Roksana Pirouzmand’s debut exhibition with the gallery.  

Between creases and folds, a mountain, a desert
A land to fall asleep, to be told stories, to grieve
on a fault line, in a volcano, under a chandelier

 A sculptor, ceramicist, and installation and performance artist, Pirouzmand directs her multifaceted practice toward broad links between material and the human body, emphasizing how the two might interact in processes such as memory, relationship, communication, and resilience. In her newest work, Pirouzmand takes a turn toward the familial as she reflects on both personal and multigenerational diasporic histories through ruminative silhouettes of exile and the ties that bind.

A tap, a word
To remember
To caress until it all falls apart
Past rubs itself against present
Sands it down
Till it all becomes one 

At the center of the gallery is a ceramic cast of the artist’s body. Covering the body is a line of casts made from her mother’s hands. The hands tap on the back of the sculpture every five minutes. Each tap stands for a word, a story told without language. Their sound comes from friction between the hands and the body, rubbing against, pulverizing and changing one another with each successive blow.

The artworks on the walls are made from earthen ceramic. Figures whose faces the artist has hollowed out kneel down or pile up. They’re in a place between home and unfamiliar land, at a time between the night and the day. Their grief is shared in a between time and a between place. Gestures blur the lines of care and violence; a shoulder is offered to rest a head, as one figure sits with their entire weight atop another. Bodies become steps, rising or sinking between a rift in the mountain. They stitch the land together.

Like a pebble in a riverbed
Sitting on the couch 
The news rushes over
The soft water,
The hard stone
Waiting until it all falls into place

Roksana Pirouzmand (b. 1990)  lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Born in Yazd, Iran, she immigrated to the United States in 2012 and was joined by her family five years later in California. She received a BFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2017 and an MFA from UCLA in 2022. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Spurs Gallery, Beijing (2024); Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living at the Hammer, Los Angeles (2023); Del Vaz Projects, Los Angeles (2022); Make Room, Los Angeles (2022) and Simon Lee Gallery, London (2022).