Girl Friday Breakfast Club with Soheila Sokhanvari on 28 April 2023

Soheila Sokhanvari in her exhibition Rebel, Rebel at the Barbican Curve Gallery, 2023. Photo: Lia Toby

Soheila Sokhanvari in her exhibition 'Rebel, Rebel' at the Barbican Curve Gallery, 2023. Photo: Lia Toby

Join us online at 8am (UK time) for the Girl Friday Breakfast Club with Soheila Sokhanvari on Friday 28 April 2023, convened by Anita Taylor. This is the first event in the 2023/24 Annual Season of Girl Friday Breakfast Club events and it is now possible to purchase a season ticket or a single ticket by booking here.

Soheila Sokhanvari is a British/Iranian artist, born in Shiraz, whose multimedia work cultivates a non-uniform practice, and her works deal with contemporary political landscapes with a focus on pre-revolutionary Iran 1979. She is drawn to events and traumas that linger in the collective consciousness or cause mass amnesia. Faced with political events and traumas of contemporary Iranian politics that are impossible to represent, she draws with Iranian crude oil on paper that allows the medium to carry the political message. Her paintings employ the medieval technique of egg tempera on vellum by grinding colour pigments and mixing with egg yolk. She is interested in the practice of magic realism, symbolism and allegory that allows political and social commentary through poetry, metaphor, and subtext. Magic realism being the most useful tool that allows slippage in meaning that resists totalitarian discourse of all kinds.

Soheila Sokhanvari first graduated in Biochemistry in 1986 and worked as a cytogeneticist from 1987 and worked as a research scientist for Cambridge University from 1998-2005 when she took a leap of faith to follow her dreams to become an artist. She studied from 2001-2005 part time and graduated with a degree in Fine Art and Art History from Anglia Ruskin University, followed by a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2006 and an MFA Fine Art from Goldsmiths College in 2011. She has recently exhibited in a solo show ‘Rebel Rebel’ at Barbican Curve Gallery, that ended in February 2023 and was selected as one of 22 artists for a public arts commission for Victoria Station, London by the Tate Collective and the London Mayor in 2018. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and has works included in national and international museums as well as private collections, including LACMA in LA, The New Art Gallery Walsall, The Government Collection and The Women’s Art Collection, Cambridge University.

The Girl Friday Breakfast Club was established by Professors Kate Reynolds and Anita Taylor in 2018 to provide a friendly and informal space for women to meet and to hear from an interesting woman speaker, eat breakfast and drink great coffee or tea together at Drawing Projects UK on the last Friday of each month. We held our first online Girl Friday in October 2020 and have reached a new and growing audience. We aim to retain the original informal format, and events are not recorded, so do book to join in - and bring your own breakfast, lunch or supper, depending on where you are in the world! All women, and those who identify as women, are welcome to join the Girl Friday Breakfast Club.

Tickets: Please note that we are introducing an Annual Season Ticket option for the Girl Friday Breakfast Club from 28 April 2023 to 29 March 2024. The Annual Season Ticket enables you to attend all of the online Girl Friday Breakfast Club events that are held on the last Friday of the month - during the 2023/24 season, there will be a minimum of 10 events available for you to attend. Single tickets for this event only are also available.

Joining the online event : Please note that the Zoom link to join this event will be made available in the online event information that you will find once you have registered for the event - you will need to log into Eventbrite to find this. You will then either need to click on the joining link OR copy and paste the link into your web browser to join the event on the day.

We look forward to welcoming you!

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