New Traditions

Artists

Desire Moheb-Zandi

Press release

Wentrup is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Paris-based artist Desire Moheb-Zandi during Berlin Art Week 2024. In her large-format, sculptural tapestries, the artist combines her personal history and cultural identity. Drawing on memories of her childhood in Turkey, where her grandmother taught her to weave, Moheb-Zandi interweaves traditional techniques with modern motifs and media. The artist transforms themes and forms as part of a long-standing tradition, handed down from generation to generation, into her own language – into "New Traditions". She draws on the diversity of her cultural roots, her travels, and the people she has met along the way.

In the same way, the artist observes and collects various materials that she is surrounded by and that are available today: re-cycled cut-up bras, neon threads, wool, PVC, rubber tubes, or glittering upcycled yarn from an Italian textile factory. She intuitively assembles these materials into a palette that reflects her formal and chromatic explorations. And here too, by choosing "her thread", she creates new traditions that lift the art of weaving to a new level.