Independent New York, 2025

08.05.25 - 11.05.25

We are thrilled to share our first participation at Independent New York. We will be showing works by Nooshin Askari. You can find us at booth 101.

Nooshin Askari (b.1989, Tehran) Through an expansive drawing practice, the artist traces shape as a mode that both recognizes form and simultaneously diverts it. Such a pose marks a passage toward a space where style is inseparable from presence, and the temporal direction of language is conditioned by the disorientation of desire. Askari’s research involves assembling a glossary of decoration as a critical framework for their practice, drawing upon cultural cross-contaminations through ideas of representation.

One entry example—in the glossary—is the homoerotic trope in Persian literature, Shahrashoub, which translates as “city-chaos/a beauty who turns the city into chaos.” Dating back to the 12th century, -Shahrashoub addresses the beloved—often engaged in a trade or craft—who coquettishly offers their wares to the love-struck poet or writer. Contrary to Orientalist interpretations, the trope is -unconcerned with musings on class and instead appropriates the city’s commercial scene as a site for obscene -projection. The literature has been broadly used as handbooks for cruising the cities, through which the city and the beloved continuously replace one another.

For this edition of Independent Art Fair, Askari presents a series of sculptural framed drawings in the shape of folded papers, each evoking a map while embodying a figure unfolding into a scenery -where a star -constellation appears upon the ruins. The artist destabilizes the art form by accentuating the -frame as a threshold where drawing and sculpture become interchangeable. This shapeshifting -movement in media and titling the works becomes the ground for further perversions of forms of navigation and -language. Referring to Shahrashoub, Askari draws a parallel between the acts of reading and gay -cruising, -contemplating the anatomy of a book —through titling the works—as a guide to a space where the -projection of desire disrupts language.

Drawing upon the concept Al-woqouf `ala al-atlal (“Standing upon ruins”) in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, which later influenced Persian verse, the artist situates desire as inherently in motion, understanding such a state as both the foundation and direction of language. Forms of navigation such as maps and star -constellations are then diverted by the outlines of the drawings into coded eroticism. Outlining shapes becomes the main strategy for the artist to build narrative through projection, and layers of projection build relations that are not possible in a linear association e.g. in the centerpiece—a heart shaped frame—the ruin becomes the broken heart, and the fleeting desire becomes the gutter of a book, the back.