NEWS CENTER

Iranian artist Minoo Emami was in the gallery preparing for a daring, almost unthinkable piece of performance art. On Nov. 11, Veterans Day, Emami destroyed 22 of her paintings by fire, including early works dating back to 1998. Many of the paintings depict artificial limbs in whimsical, but sometimes surreal and dark settings.

“I love my paintings, you know, don’t take me wrong,” Emami said. “But compared to veterans, veteran’s families, and what they lose? It’s nothing.”

With help of volunteers, mostly UHart students, the paintings were sewn on a giant, black quilt. The quilt was stitched together using surgical sutures, another important element of the work. Emami taught project volunteers how to sew this way.

“I give them a demo of suturing, actually like the surgeon stitches,” Emami said. “So they suture the canvas to the quilt. And there’s small cuts in the paintings and all of them have body parts, so they suture the canvases as well.”

Read the full article posted in Connecticut Public, here.
Posted November 14. 2023
By Ray Hardman
Connecticut Public Radio