DAMES

DAMES
Online Exhibition
10 March 2021 – 31 March 2021

Everyone who is joining is encouraged to have a beverage with them as we will all virtually cheer with the artists.

Join Zoom Meeting ( Opening )
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81967851251?pwd=ZUlyN2tMQVJjTzBJQnVNU2tQRVBIUT09

Blue Rhino is proud to present Dames, a collective exhibition of Blue Rhino’s featured women artists. Opening on March 10th, the exhibition lives digitally on our website until March 31st , creating access from anywhere in the world, breaking the barriers due to the COVID 19 situation. Artists include Chara Kontopoulou, Maliheh Zafarnezhad, Laleh Memar Ardestani, Anastasiia Danilenko, Katarina Dordevic, Elif Celebi, Veronica Botticelli, Solmaz Tohidloo and Roxana Manouchehri.

Dames aims to champion women artists in their career and give them a voice by highlighting their importance and contribution to the art world and its history, as unfortunately they are often still being left out of its canon. All from different backgrounds, each carefully curated artist offers us their particular perspective of the female gaze through their diverse techniques and mediums.

PRIVATE VIEW

Blue Rhino is hosting a live online event with the participating artists on March 10th at 6 pm GMT. The event is open to all publics, the Blue Rhino team will host a commentary exhibition tour, hold a conversation with the artists about their works, and chair a Q&A with the public and the artists. To participate please email us at info@bluerhino.art.

ARTISTS

Born in Cyprus, Chara Kontopoulou, is a visual artist whose work is inevitably influenced by the consumption of information and the superfluous images which appear on social media. Kontopoulou creates large scale, abstract paintings which encourage the viewer to interact and turn their passive seeing into active looking, inviting them into an exploring tool of experience.
As her works are composed of alternate layers of resin and countless painting strokes, the overall artwork creates the illusion of a three-dimensional image. Due to the nature of the medium, the outcome is a shiny and reflective surface, the aim of which is to mirror the viewer and make them part of the artwork. As an emerging artist, Chara has participated in group exhibitions in the United Kingdom, Greece and Cyprus. She also volunteers in museums and charities and organizes creative workshops with the purpose to engage people with arts. She currently lives and works in Manchester, UK.

Maliheh Zafarnezhad, is an Iranian-Irish multimedia artist. As an Iranian born artist now living in the diaspora, inspirations in her artworks usually emerge out of a multi-national identity, mixed culture, immigration experiences and childhood memories from Iran. Maliheh has spent most of her life in her born country in which she was forced to navigate a web of restrictions as a woman. Hence, most of Maliheh’s artworks are dominated by portraits of women filled by thought-provoking messages about love, feelings, loyalty, obligation and social issues. Maliheh uses acrylic gel transfer and collage as her main medium. The collage pieces decontextualize images by merging photos from her personal antiquated family photos alongside archival photos of historical illustrations. These works could be seen as romantic attempts to delicately touch and provoke finest human emotions and probably to outline the paradoxes and complexity of identity.

Laleh Memar, born in 1972 in Tehran, has a diploma in technical and vocational high school in the field of visual communication-graphic design, and a bachelor’s degree in graphic design-visual communication (University of Art and Architecture), Central Branch, Tehran. Between 1997 and 2004, after immigrating to the United Kingdom, she took one-year and two-year courses in life drawing, illustration, and printing. The main focus of her work, according to the rules of creation, is modern, contemporary and minimalist, based on spiritual attitude. Human figures and plants are beautiful manifestations of an amazing nature, organic and majestic, and ultimately inspiring…. Always looking at and paying attention to these objects in various ways has been an important concern for the artist, to be able to do what is cultivated in her mind and what she needs to create.

Anastasiia Danilenko, is a Russian artist whose paintings have been exhibited nationally, in Greece and in the United Kingdom. She describes her artistic process as expression through images, forms, color spots, and lines. Danilenko’s figurative compositions focus on the depiction of facial expressions, skin colors, hair and eyes, lines, and movements of the body, which all embody her subject’s essential characters. She creates using oils on canvas.

Since 1989, Katarina Dordevic has exhibited with the ULUS members at over 250 group exhibitions (Canada, Japan, Korea, Austria, Belgium, Russia, Lithuania, Poland, Czesh, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Sweeden, Croatia, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia, Albania). She also took part in the work of over 50 Art Colonies, Symphosiums, and Plainairs (Germany, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Austria, Romania, Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, Egypt, Serbia, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania).

While creating her works, Elif Celebi concentrates on concepts that complement each other, such as ’emptiness and motion, human and society’. By associating such concepts of ’emptiness’, this can sometimes turn into a spatial emptiness or sometimes an emotional emptiness. Her collages series, tell a different story. As hundreds and maybe thousands of images pass by our eyes every day, Celebi highlights the importance of being selective. In our daily lives or through the production processes of artists, certain visuals attract our attention and take place in our minds. In her series of many small-sized works, it constitutes her selection from the visuals attached to her mind. Although they touch on many issues separately, when they come together, they describe life, society, people, nature, just like us.

Born in Rome in 1979, Veronica Botticelli left the family nest at the age of 18 to enter the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. She revealed herself in her first group exhibition in 2004, and two years later won first prize in the national visual arts competition organised by ANMII and INAIL, at the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome. That same year, she held a solo exhibition at the library of Villa Mercede, in collaboration with the Fondazione Pastificio Cerere. Her work was then recognized across borders, exhibited in New York, Germany, London, Switzerland, and most recently in Paris. Botticelli works mainly on large-format canvases, which are complemented by smaller works on paper. His deliberately silent, often untitled canvases reveal a part of his soul residing in colour. She integrates collages, voluntarily flattening the volume, of objects referring to the 50s and 60s in a resolutely modern context.

The new artworks that Solmaz Tohidloo has presented in these recent years attempt to talk openly to the viewer. In this series of works, the form has altered; without it being forced to keep a distance from the meaning. The blackness of the words and letters do not contain any evident or literal sense; the word is all about the meaning, a concept for speaking. The women of these works are similar to those contemporary ones we meet every day and are lost in the hues and cries of the surroundings. The excitement of the colour tries to replace this tumult. In these works, contrary to the previous ones, the connection with the work is considered to be way beyond identification; it is the viewer that is illustrated in the middle of the frame on the canvas. In some of these works, the bird has been placed in the hands of the narrator of the image with such serenity as if it is not worried about staying at all. The word is this: they will fly together.

Roxana Manouchehri is a visual artist who’s practice is focused primarily in paintings, installation, photography and drawing. Based in Dublin, Ireland, her inspiration is derived from her environment, childhood memories, her hometown and Persian miniatures. She has exhibited her works widely, including locations such as Seoul, Pori (Finland), Tehran, Dubai, London and Dublin.
‘Although primarily a painter, as painting is my favourite discipline, I don’t call myself a painter. Photography, drawing and installation are other media I have worked with. The art form I choose depends on the concept I am working on.’ – Manouchehri

ABOUT BLUE RHINO ART CONSULTANCY

Founded by Tima Jam in 2016, Blue Rhino Art consultancy is an international organisation that champions artists from all over the world. Currently working with over 2000 international artists, Blue Rhino established its headquarters in London, offering various services such as art consultancy, art commissioning and curating exhibitions or events. Our continuing devotion to discovery and an eye for spotting and supporting the newest, raw talent, defines Blue Rhino as the business it is today.

Organiser:
Blue Rhino Art Consultancy

Art Director:
Tima Jam

Assistant Coordinator:

Dan Jim A.Opolot
Maryam Sajedi
Caroline Rosello
Regis Kuevidjen

CONTACT
info@bluerhino.art, +447388061078