Unche Studio

Unche Studio will be in residence at PS1 Sept. 30-Oct. 10. Their project is supported by the City of Iowa City Public Art Program and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

PUBLIC EVENT: Wednesday Oct. 9 at PS1 Close House

The Farsi word “آنچه” translates to “that which” in English. Unche embodies a sense of ambiguity, inclusiveness, and the potential for all that is unseen, unknown, and yet to come. As an artist/designer collective founded in 2019, Unche uses art, design, and theory to create physical and virtual installations not to create bridges that connect polarities but to demonstrate the existence of gaps between things. Afrooz Partovi, Ramyar Vala and Rambod Vala as the founders of the collective situate themselves within this in-between-ness and out of which generate production, develop lines of flight and new possibilities for engaging with alterity. The struggle to produce, rather than arrive at an understanding is at the cornerstone of Unche’s practice.

https://unche.studio

IG: @unche.studio

Afrooz Partovi (Born 1992 – Tehran, Iran)

Afrooz Partovi is an artist-architect who explores intangible dimensions of time and space through immersive, site-specific installations using AR/VR technologies and time-based media. Her work delves into the transition from existence to nonexistence, creating heterotopias as vessels to remember when collective dreams dried up, when surveillance replaced adventure, and when police replaced slayers. Afrooz earned her master’s degree in Architecture from Tehran University of Science and Technology in 2020 and is currently completing a second master’s degree in Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work received an honorable mention in the International Habitat: Rethinking Student Housing competition in 2020. Her research, “Social Sustainability Approach to Identity Protection of Future Residences” was published in the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies the same year. She received the On the Ground grant from Carnegie Mellon University in 2023.

Rambod Vala (Born 1985 – Tehran, Iran)

Rambod Vala is an artist, graphic designer and educator working with graphic and moving images. He received his master’s degree in Art, Practice and Theory from Northwestern University in 2015. He works with video, installation and various narrative structures that weave realism and fantasy, politics and romance, skepticism and belief. His work has been exhibited and featured in a multitude of international exhibitions and publications, among those are Post-Past exhibition at Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and New York Times in January 2020. Vala has won the prize for typographic excellence at the 2nd chicago international poster biennial in 2010, the jury award at the 5th china international poster biennial in 2011. He was awarded the runner-up prize from The Claire Rosen &; Samuel Edes Foundation and the Luminarts Fellowship from the Luminarts Cultural Foundation. In March 2022, he finished a residency at the Delfina Foundation in London.

Ramyar Vala (Born 1986 – Tehran, Iran)

Ramyar Vala’s early practice was a graphic designer. Though still grounded in design and fabrication he started his research in tracking the functionality of crafted objects and the stories behind cultural ornamentation while he was completing his master’s degree at the University of Chicago. Ramyar’s multi-disciplinary practice explores the inner lives and circulation of traditional motifs— tracing how they travel, transform, are adapted, and are appropriated trans-nationally and trans-culturally — through sculpture, installation, and video work. His work has been shown in the Louvre (Paris), the New Museum (New York), Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), EXPO Chicago, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), among others.