Nooshin Zokaie: The Enchanting Blue
This article was originally published on Hue & Eye.
About Nooshin Zokaie
Born and raised in Tehran (b.1978), Nooshin Zokaie currently lives and works in Milan where she finally fulfilled her artistic career. As a matter of fact, Nooshin initially achieved a degree in Mathematics and Economics in Tehran, although she has been painting all her life. She suddenly understood how art could entirely interest her when she undertook some sculpture and ceramic courses during university, and there her love for handy crafts felt satisfied. The decision of quitting economics to explore the art world came out quite frankly.
Five years ago she then enrolled in a Ba Hons in Painting at the Brera Academy in Milan, which she brilliantly ended in 2018. Her final dissertation was, indeed, the body of work ‘The covered City’. During her studies in Milan, Nooshin has been strongly supported by his teachers to explore and push her artistic talent, and today, she is busy researching and studying new techniques to improve her art flow continuously. She already participated in several group shows in Milan, although she revealed her ambition to hold a solo show. Nooshin is also currently working on some ideas on flower design and jewelry, to improve her craft making and build an always more consistent artistic awareness.
Past And Present
After the war, started in 1980, the city of Tehran changed as fast as a flash of lightning, and young Nooshin had to combine the thick past and that immediate present into some random gazes she then processed into more tangible images.
The deep bond for her mother country brought her to choose some specific and characteristic hue to define the emotion of lost land. For this, her artworks, belonging to the series ‘The Covered City’, have colors ranging from blue to turquoise. Blue is a natural shade you will always bump into while in Iran: the color of the sea to start from, as for the old monumental villas and the mosaics. Nowadays, though, Nooshin teaches us that blue is also becoming a dividing symbol. Tehran, like many other big modern cities, uses huge turquoise cloths to cover old historical villas which are more and more all becoming construction sites for modern buildings or to divide beaches into areas suitable just for men or only for women. So it comes naturally out that the color blue has for Nooshin a deep and opposite meaning of nostalgia and anguish, an intimate feeling she developed through a painting technique that perfectly reveals all these emotions.
In the series ‘The Covered City’, Nooshin depicts wintery landscapes, highlighting the desolation of a city that has been deprived of its passion. Despite this, a fascinating feeling arises from her canvas, one of melancholy and beauty, an attempt to show how the soul of a country still lives under its thick covers.
Ma nell’attesa del tuo svelarti, un giorno d’inverno, quando la neve bianca si posa dolcemente sul grigiore del tuo corpo, io ritrovo l’incanto del quel blu. Comunque tu sei sempre bella, anche con questi teloni blu. Il colore blu ti sta benissimo, sempre! / And awaiting for you to reveal, on a cold winter day, when snow kindly lays onto your body, I finally notice that enchanting blue. You are always beautiful, although if coverd in these blue cloths. The color blue suits you perfectly, at all times!
About Nooshin’s Technique
Her technique is mixed media, obtained through the use of collage, photos, and textiles directly stuck on the canvas. Nooshin will then paint on top of the collage, to reveal a final layered, geometrical and abstract painting.
