Embark on a captivating conversation with artists Nima Nabavi and Jason Seife as they invite us into the enchanting world of their collaborative exhibition, “Duality.” What initiated as a fortuitous meeting at the Sharjah Islamic Arts Festival in 2018 has burgeoned into a profound artistic journey over the past five years. Join us as Nima and Jason unravel the threads of their creative partnership, overcoming geographical distances to craft artworks that harmonize on the theme of duality. Engage in the dialogue surrounding the conceptual genesis of the exhibition’s title and witness how it comes alive through the distinct visual languages of Nabavi and Seife. Explore the silent conductor of geometry in maintaining individuality within shared proportions, and delve into the significance of palindromic titles that mirror the very essence of duality. Immerse yourself in the fascinating clash of Seife’s bold flatness and Nabavi’s intricate layering, where unique techniques intertwine to narrate a story of complexity and symmetry. This conversation unfolds the captivating synergy born when two artistic minds converge, celebrating the inherent beauty discovered within duality.
- How did the collaborative relationship between Nima Nabavi and Jason Seife evolve for the “Duality” exhibition? What unique aspects did each artist bring to the table, and how did their individual approaches intersect with the theme of duality?
We originally met when we were both exhibiting artists at the Sharjah Islamic Arts Festival in 2018. At the time we were both relatively new to the art world, and as self-taught artists, we found a lot of commonalities in the path that we were both on. We stayed in touch after the festival and made a habit of sharing our learnings in our burgeoning careers – everything from the creative processes, mediums, and materials, to the nuances of navigating the business side of art. Over the next five years, we developed a strong and trusting friendship and became very familiar with each other’s practices.
Within these many conversations, the idea of collaborating with one another on a show was germinating but the challenge was to imagine a means of doing so when we both lived and worked in different cities. Eventually, in 2022, we started discussing a show where works would be done in pairs of identically sized and shaped canvases that shared similarities in structural composition and/or colour palette. We wanted to create reflective works that conversed with one another – telling the same stories but in different visual languages.
- The exhibition seems to explore both literal and metaphorical interpretations of duality. Could you delve into the conceptual framework behind the choice of the title “Duality” and how it manifests in the artistic expressions of Nabavi and Seife?
There are many definitions of Duality, but for us, the focus was on the idea of a system that seemingly contains two differing halves but actually exists in harmony as a unified whole. A simpler way to put it would be, “two sides to the same coin”. We wanted to create an exhibition that felt complete and singular while containing works from two different artists in a fine balance. This would be the metaphorical interpretation of Duality.
In a very literal sense though, the works were made in pairs as duos, one from each artist. Even the centrepiece and final work, NOON, which is a combined artwork – is created from 4 individual pieces, two from each artist – a literal dual.
- Geometry appears to be a common ground for Nabavi and Seife. How did they navigate the challenge of maintaining individuality in their works while adhering to shared foundational proportions? How did geometry influence their artistic dialogue?
To mitigate the contrasting methodologies of our individual practices, we relied heavily on the invisible geometric grids that underpinned both of our approaches. Through many conversations and a variety of experiments, we were able to find a means of establishing anchoring starting points, from which we would both build our final works. These geometric scaffolds allowed us a common language bridging the divide in our individual techniques. This is how we were able to each work in our own styles while remaining creatively tethered to the same source and to one another.
- The titles of the artworks are described as evocative palindromes shared between pairings. Could you elaborate on the significance of these titles? How do they contribute to the overarching theme of commonality and departure within the exhibition?
We each use our own unique naming conventions for our artworks: Jason’s titles often reference books or music that he is engaging with while working on a particular piece while Nima’s titles are simply the dates when the works were completed. For this collaboration, we felt we needed a new naming convention that was meaningful to the essence of the exhibition. The idea of using palindromes was a nod to seeing the same thing from two different perspectives. The titles of the works; Tenet, Level, Civic, Radar and Noon all remain the same whether they are read forwards or backwards. For us, it was less about the meanings of the actual words and more about the design structure of each word, the symmetry of their mirrored building blocks.
- Both artists, Nabavi and Seife, seem to employ different mediums and techniques. How did the stark differences in their approaches, such as Seife’s bold flatness and Nabavi’s intricate layering, influence the overall aesthetic of the exhibition? How did these differences create a symbiotic relationship in the artistic narrative?
The resonant commonality in our works is the complexity and detail that exists within a very ordered and symmetric composition. Each of us employs colour in our own way, Jason mixing his on a palette before applying them by brush to a smooth flat finish on canvas, while Nima builds his up one line layer at a time with rulered pen strokes directly on the final surface. We are essentially using different tools and methods to build our own unique renditions of the same idea. We feel however that the difference in the resultant aesthetic of the pieces actually works to highlight their points of similarity. Each individual work in a pair may have its own unique manifestation, but their essence remains the same.