ArtForum

It feels like a tomb. The dim lighting on Nazgol Ansarinia’s grayscale works lends this exhibition a crypt-like ambiance. Hanging on the left is the monumental Membrane, 2014, a more than sixteen-foot-tall paper impression of a two-story wall from a demolished house in Tehran. This is Ansarinia’s first piece utilizing 3-D scanning, and it features prominently in the Iranian artist’s first solo show in Dubai. Stand behind Membrane in awe and gaze at the arterial pattern of the paper, impressed with the artist’s fingerprints. “I wanted it to look like you’ve peeled the skin off of this building,” said Ansarinia, and the work does indeed resemble shriveling skin in a memento mori of what hastily perishes in Tehran’s recent rapid urbanism.