exhibition

DAROOKHANEH APOTHEKE PHARMACY

Sohrab Kashani & Anahita Razmi

26/04 – 02/06/2024

Opening: Thursday, 25/04/2024, 6 pm
Venue: philomena+ project room, Heinestraße 40, 1020 Vienna

curated by Christine Bruckbauer and Aline Lenzhofer

 

Sunday, 28/04/2024, 6.30 pm

Read-In Session by Annette Krauss  (artist, KKP University for Applied Arts Vienna) and Serena Lee (artist, PHD-in-practice at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna)

 

Friday, 03/05/2024, 6.30 pm

Talk & Dialogue on Jacob E. Polak’s “Medical Letters from Persia” by Afsaneh Gächter (medical sociologist and medical historian at the University for Continuing Education Krems)

 

On following days the artists will be on-site for further discussions:

Friday, 26/04/2024, 3–7 pm (Anahita Razmi and Sohrab Kashani)

Tuesday, 07/05/2024,  3–7 pm (Sohrab Kashani)

Thursday, 09/05/2024,  3–7 pm (Anahita Razmi)

Sohrab Kashani & Anahita Razmi, Darookhaneh Apotheke Pharmacy, 2022, © the artists.

Darookhaneh Apotheke Pharmacy is an Iranian pharmacy run by the artists Sohrab Kashani and Anahita Razmi. Its spatial set-up comprises of an installation filled with copies of Iranian pharmaceuticals and medication packages.

Emerging in the aftermath of a global pandemic and a period of shared devastation during which structural inequalities like the unequal distribution of medicine became pressing issues, Darookhaneh Apotheke Pharmacy links to the Iranian concept of “darookhaneh” (“daroo” (medicine/cure) and “khaneh” (home) = “the home for cure”, testing out what it can enable for culturally and disciplinary hybrid artistic work during crisis.

 

Contextual disparities, trade restrictions, and health and access inequalities between the Global North and the Global South are some of the topics echoed in this space.

Linking cultural and artistic questions to structural and economic ones, and bringing together selected speakers, collaborators, and the public, Darookhaneh Apotheke Pharmacy fosters conversations on these critical topics and their larger contexts.

artists

SOHRAB KASHANI

(*1989 in Tehran) is a Rotterdam-based artist working primarily with installation, film, and performance. His work often explores themes of space, body, and perception. Sohrab Kashani assumes the persona of Super Sohrab, an alter-ego superhero who employs satire and the embrace of failure as tools to navigate the complexities of everyday life. Sohrab Kashani also runs Sazmanab, a curatorial platform that once operated as an art space and residency programme in Tehran and is currently based in the Netherlands. His recent collaborations and duo exhibitions include Darookhaneh Apotheke Pharmacy at uqbar projectspace in Berlin (2022) and The Other Apartment at Mattress Factory Museum in Pittsburgh, US (2019-2020).

ANAHITA RAZMI

(*1981 in Hamburg) lives and works in Berlin and London. She is a visual artist working with installation, moving image, photography, objects, and performance. Often using her German Iranian background as a reference, her practice explores contextual, geographical, and ideological shifts – with a focus on shifts between an ‘East’ and a ‘West’. She is interested in a fluid, transcultural approach to contemporary art and its histories & references – and in work that is producing testing grounds for possibilities of import/export, hybrid identities, and the constructions & ambiguities of cultural representation. Her works were exhibited in international institutions like Museo Jumex, Mexico City, Halle 14, Leipzig, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Sazmanab Center for Contemporary Art, Tehran, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, The National Art Center, Tokyo, and Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. Among other grants and scholarships, Razmi received a Kulturakademie Tarabya Fellowship (2021), the Goethe at LUX Residency, London (2018).

Supported by
        Lisa Großkopf