26 Aug 2017

Roya Amigh: In My Sleep I Migrate Back

FiveMyles

Reviewed by Harry Newman

Histories - personal, cultural, and national - and their shattering are at the core of "In My Sleep I Migrate Back," the first New York show of Iranian artist Roya Amigh, at FiveMyles. These wall pieces and sculptural forms, made from thread and paper, combine diary entries, excerpts of Sufi poetry, and imagery from classic Persian miniatures into intricate, fragmented constructions.

The world is that kind of sleep, a hanging, six-foot cocoon, contains gardens, turbaned horse-riders, men in rooms drinking tea, and lines of Farsi. Each word and image is made from thread glued to paper. The same imagery appears in Back and Forth, which resembles a carpet torn to pieces and roughly reassembled. Amigh's work suggests the fragility of culture and that which connects us to each other. Looming Danger, the latest piece, faces this directly. Across a wall, two dozen panels with text from recent reports of hate crimes are held together by threads, and seem to drift apart.