Biography
While working with a range of media including painting, sculpture and installation, she is perhaps best known for her performance work. For the 2009 Sharjah Biennial, Gita Meh recreated Soffreh, an installation and performance piece where a table is covered with a 'cloth' made of sugar and a meal prepared. The audience are invited to join in the feast and to draw in the sugar while sharing their experiences, conversation and ultimately friendship. In Farsi, soffreh means tablecloth, and for Meh, this work 'becomes a prayer place, a dance place, a home place, it becomes belonging. It reflects the architecture of my past in a personal context.'
Meh investigates issues of place, space, pleasure and identity in work that draws on her own experience of the duality of Middle Eastern and Western cultures, then reconstructs and reinforces the best of both traditions.
Soffreh has been recreated in locations around the world including Sharjah Biennial (2009), Jam Jar, Dubai (2008), Los Angeles (2003) and Valencia, Spain (1996). She has had solo exhibitions as part of Phantom Galleries' storefront project, Los Angeles (2008), Tashkeel Gallery, Dubai (2008) and Hoor Gallery, Tehran, Iran (2008). Her work has been included in group exhibitions, notably at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran (2008).
Meh studied at the New Andish Azadegan, School of Visual Arts, Tehran, in 1981 and from 1983-92 studied in Italy and Germany. In 1996 she received a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, USA. Born in Tehran, Iran in 1963, Gita Meh currently lives and works between Dubai, Tehran and Los Angeles.
October 2010
This person was part of Sharjah Biennial 9
