By Randi Bjornstad
The Karin Clarke Gallery in downtown Eugene features an exquisite exhibit by Iranian artist Naeemeh Naeemaei that ends June 24, made up of selections of her recent works, mixed-media pieces titled Arterioles, plus a group from a previous series called JAAN — large-format photographs-on-canvas, overpainted with ink made with ash from the Willamette National Forest.
Her work first appeared in the Eugene area in 2019, in a show at the University of Oregon’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, titled Dreams Before Extinction. In 2022, the JAAN series was shown at the Schneider Museum of Art in Ashland.
In her artist’s statement, Naeemaei describes “jaan” as “a visual dialogue with nature.”
“I have worked on several series and they mostly had a theme related to nature,” she wrote. “My recent painting series has an obvious environmental theme blended with cultural and social issues.
Portrait of artist Naeemeh Naeemaei
“Jaan is a visual dialogue with nature. It’s also about unifying with nature through a practice of camouflage, intimation, and finally, dissolving in nature. A form of respectful interaction in which I replaced my body with a delicate red scarf which was initially part of my costume in my painting series. Through this journey, I try to get closer to nature, mostly plants and animals in the Pacific Northwest to play the role of a healer by getting into cracks and wounds as an artery, and being a bandage over broken bodies. Eventually, by the end of the final stage, there would be no body and soon no trace of my presence.”
However, Naeemaei’s connection with Eugene started long even before these exhibits came on the scene. In 2014, when she was 29 years old, she had an exhibit of her paintings at the Raven Frame Works Gallery in the Whiteaker Neighborhood.
That had come about after Eugene cultural historian and graphic artist Paul Semonin and his wife, Anuncia Escala, professor at Oregon State University, heard about Naeemaei’s work from an Iranian friend who had seen her work in Tehran.
Impressed by its quality and message, the couple determined to find a way to turn her paintings into a book and have it published in the United States.
They succeeded, and Dreams Before Extinction was published in 2013 and still is available through various online book outlets.
Thriftbooks introduces it this way:
“Literary Nonfiction. Art. Middle Eastern Studies. Translated from the Farsi by Kavous Seyed-Emami. Bilingual Edition. Dissolving the artificial boundary between human society and wild nature is the goal of DREAMS BEFORE EXTINCTION, a series of twelve remarkable paintings of endangered species by the Tehran-based Iranian artist Naeemeh Naeemaei. Painted in a dream-like, figurative style that is disarming in its sincerity, her artworks bring a distinctly Muslim perspective to environmental art and activism. Through a deeply personal narrative that is disturbing for both its intimacy and its boldness, Naeemaei bravely crosses the dividing line between humans and wild nature to awaken emotional concern not only for the animals in question, but also for the environment as a whole. “I use my dreams, wishes, memorabilia and legends, plus information about the species, to extend my imagination. In each painting, I’ve lived with an animal in my mind. It is a deep connection.” With illuminating comments on each painting by the artist, a preface by the Iranian environmentalist Kavous Seyed-Emami, and an introduction by the historian and graphic artist Paul Semonin, this beautiful bilingual book speaks across the cultural barriers existing today between the Muslim world and Western societies.”
Naieemaei has lived in Oregon since 2014.
The story that appeared in The Register-Guard on July 17, 2014, that introduced Naeemaei and her work is reproduced here:
By Randi Bjornstad
The political barriers between the United States and Iran may seem intractable, but a Eugene couple and a young Iranian artist have connected nonetheless.
The result is an art exhibit that opens this week at the Raven Frame Works Gallery in the Whiteaker neighborhood.
The artist is a 29-year-old woman named Naeemeh Naeemaei. She creates large, allegorical paintings intended to evoke a less scientific, more emotional attention to the threat of or actual extinction of animals in her part of the world.
Sometimes she incorporates folkloric or religious symbols that lend even more poignancy to the relationship between people and other creatures in her paintings.
One of the most striking is a self-portrait of the artist wearing a white chador and a blood red hijab.
She stands in a doorway, holding a copy of the Quran, or Koran, over the head of an endangered Siberian crane, also glistening white with bright red beak and legs.
The Siberian crane is a traveler from Russia that comes to the coast of the Caspian Sea in Iran to spend the winter each year, Naeemaeis accompanying narrative reads.
“His Persian name is Omid, which means hope. The book I am holding over the cranes head is the Koran.
“Traditionally, the Koran is held over the head of a person who is leaving the house for a journey, to make sure (he or she) will return safely. I am using this custom, which is common in Iran today, to ensure the crane will come back next fall.”
Eugene graphic artist and historian Paul Semonin and his wife, Anuncia Escala, first heard about Naeemaei from an Iranian friend who lives in Tehran. He had seen her work in an exhibit there.
“We met him and his wife in the late 1980s at the University of Oregon,” Semonin recalled. “Afterward, they went back to Tehran, and we went there once to visit them.”
The friend, Kavous Seyed-Emami, who is executive director of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, sent some thumbnail prints of her paintings, Semonin said.
“I felt her work was very unusual and powerful stuff, and I asked him for her email address so I could ask her about her art.”
A correspondence began, and the more Semonin and Escala learned about her art, the more determined they were to find a way to share it with American audiences.
“The way she uses religion and traditional culture to convey a deep concern and identification with nature and wild animals is compelling,” he said. “I realized it probably wouldn’t be possible to bring any of the original art here, so I got the idea of doing a book and making prints of her paintings.”
With Seyed-Emamis help, the project developed into a bilingual book in Farsi and English, named “Dreams Before Extinction” after Naeemaei’s collection of paintings.
Seyed-Emami wrote a prologue titled “A Call to Conscience,” about the growing awareness in Iran of the dangers of species extinction and the artist’s contribution to the cause.
Naeemaei’s connection with the animals she chooses to paint is so sincere and personal that it touches viewers immediately and arouses their deepest feelings of oneness with the natural world, he wrote.
For his part, Semonin contributed an introduction that explores the relationship between human society and animals in nature, tying in Persian sensibilities and cultural influences to explain the relationship for the benefit of American readers.
Finding a publisher was the most difficult part. But through a friend, Semonin connected with Perceval Press, founded by actor Viggo Mortensen to promote the work of lesser-known artists and writers …
The project has been a very satisfying one, Semonin said.
A key ingredient in this work, besides the environmental issues about species extinction, “has been breaking down stereotypes and crossing barriers between cultures,” he said. “This has been a really emotional issue for me.”
JAAN and Arterioles at The Karin Clarke Gallery
When: Through June 24, 2023
Where: 760 Willamette St., Eugene
Hours: Noon to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday through Friday; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday
Information: 541-684-7963 or karinclarkegallery.com
