Seyed Alavi: Layla / Majnun

Inspired by the 12th-century poem by poet Nizami Ganjavi, Seyed Alavi's solo exhibition _Layla and Majnun_ reinterprets the ageless tale of love, longing and separation through an immersive display of two juxtaposed textile series which hang suspended in the gallery. Presented against a backdrop of dark blue walls, the installation invites the viewer to consider the physical distance between these two archetypal lovers to be a construct. Besotted by Layla, Majnun obsessively serenades her with poetry, leading to condemnation by Layla's father, who forbids their love and forces her to marry another. A banished Majnun turns to the forest to live in exile amongst the animals as Layla perishes of a broken heart. In spite of their separation and physical distance, their bond transcends the material world to form an iconic tale of eternal love. At human scale, the seven tapestries depicting Majnun confront viewers as they enter the space. Machine-generated calligraphic lines form his figure, resembling writing yet remaining void of any legible meaning. Fluctuating between abstraction and figuration, Majnun exists in a state of perpetual formation. His levitating body suggests a state of transcendence and focus while the unraveling materiality of the tapestries evokes the unruly nature of a figure whose name has become synonymous with madness. Weaving together the visual languages of Persian miniature painting and rug design, the series of works depicting Layla invites viewers to reimagine the distinction between figure and ground. Morphing patterns and motifs make her presence inseparable from her surroundings, her apparition reemerges in the gallery as if manifested through hallucination or dream. Subtle variations of hand gesture and shifting form define each of her unique appearances, her gaze following the viewer throughout the room, endlessly in search of Majnun. Employing a wide range of artistic tools and mediums ranging from recent advances in sublimation-dye rug printing, collage, digital manipulation and AI-assisted image processing, Seyed approaches this body of work foremost through his exploration of how meaning and perception are created through the construction of language and form.