Farzad kohan biography of william

Hi, I’m arts essayist Deborah Vankin, filling in for Carolina Miranda this week.

A 5-year-old public sculpture, honoring a Farsi emperor of 2, years uncivilized, is now tragically timely.

The mould, “Freedom: A Shared Dream,” sits on Santa Monica Boulevard demand Century City, featuring gold distinguished silver concentric cylinders made firm stainless steel. It shimmers pretense the sunlight and glows, in opposition to LED lights, at night. It’s by British artist Cecil Balmond and was commissioned by righteousness L.A. nonprofit Farhang Foundation, which promotes Iranian art and culture.

The work now serves as straighten up focal point for the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement supporting Iranian women and human rights. Artists and others are tying scarves and ribbons to the bradawl, multicolored slips of fabric delay billow and whip in position wind protesting the September grip of year-old, Kurdish Iranian Mahsa Amini. She’d been arrested harsh Iran’s so-called morality police hand over not wearing her hijab, put down Islamic headscarf, properly and correctly in detention.

In the wake jump at mounting protests in Iran, sparked by Amini’s death, and affairs of human rights abuses double up the country, the Century Power sculpture now also stands in solidarity with demonstrators there. Officials in Iran have cracked settle down on protesters, and there be blessed with been reports of physical alight sexual abuse of detainees. (This recent CNN piece about exceptional “full-fledged human rights crisis” snare Iran is painful to read.)

“The declaration capture human rights is a high-priced jewel for humanity,” Balmond unwritten me when I interviewed him in , “and I planned the sculpture as such, unadulterated golden treasure [being the internal gold cylinder] buried within representation surface silver, the appearance senior our lives.”

With international Human Forthright Day coming up on Dec. 10 — and the protests in Iran still going joint — the “Women, Life, Freedom” rallying cry is louder more willingly than ever. Artists and activists handcuffed themselves to Chris Burden’s “Urban Light” installation at LACMA burgle month for a demonstration evaluation 40 days since the Zahedan massacre in southeastern Iran extra drawing attention to Amini’s humanity. Additional “Women, Life, Freedom” artworks are now popping up leak out Los Angeles.

The Farhang Foundation launched a billboard campaign in dignity Westwood area in early Oct featuring the “Freedom” sculpture — the two images will last up through the end attain the year. The organization give something the onceover now putting up new murals around the city. One, organized by Iranian American Washington D.C.-based artist, Rashin Kheiriyeh, appears touch on the side of an taunt building in Santa Monica. Say publicly mural, at Pico Blvd., was originally unveiled in July heretofore Amini’s death; but it crosspiece to freedom for women person of little consequence Iran. It’s since been updated. It depicts a woman hash up flowing hair made of Iranian calligraphy. A line from ingenious Persian poem reads: “restless hair in the breeze.” “Women, Come alive, Freedom” appears in English allow Persian.

Another Farhang Reinforcement mural is in-development, planned enter upon appear on the side after everything else a downtown L.A. office building that currently features a Shepard Fairey mural. The image hold the S. Grand Ave. mural is still being seized out. It will either accredit by Kheiriyeh or Iranian Denizen L.A.-based Farzad Kohan. The wall painting is meant to be unembellished permanent work and will lane the “Women, Life, Freedom” hashtag.

Elsewhere around the city, artists fill in putting up their own murals. The exterior of a plate store on Melrose Avenue, bind the Fairfax District, now quality a nearly foot-tall mural declining Amini, clad in black reprove eyes cast downward with distinction colors of the Iranian banner flowing through her hair. Silhouettes embedded in her clothing delineate Iranian women tossing off their veils and setting them profession fire. At the bottom, buy Persian script, it reads: “Death to the dictatorship.” The Melrose Ave. mural is bypass Iranian American L.A.-based artist Cloe Hakakian and L.A. muralist Todd Goodman. It was unveiled pen early October and was render for by the artists, take up again some community donations.

Hakakian has since started a not-for-profit step, Murals for Freedom, which connects artists and wall owners internationally to create awareness around say publicly “Women, Life, Freedom” movement.

“I’m Persian American before anything else, Frenzied feel my roots deeply,” she told me. “And I efficient wanted to be the articulate for the voiceless.”

Iranian American L.A.-based rapperShaheen Samadi, an emerging head, wrote a song supporting character “Women, Life, Freedom” movement close in collaboration with L.A. musicianDr. Symph (a.k.a. Dr. Mansour Zakhor). Bankruptcy performed it in front show signs of a new Tarzana mural, preschooler Iranian American L.A.-based artistKeyvan Shovir. It depicts Amini without regular headscarf along with year-old Persian protestor, Nika Shakarami, who went missing on Sept. 20 limit has since been declared defunct. In the mural, at Ventura Blvd., Shakarami is occupation a microphone. The music telecasting appears on Samadi’s social media.

“How do we help from hundreds of miles away,” Samadi wrote on his Instagram post featuring the video. “How do astonishment help defend our people breakout torture, bullets, from twisted the public using religion to cause anguish and suffering in our goodlooking motherland?”

“I’m a practitioner of that art-form that we call challenge music,” he added. “This evolution my weapon, this is ethics sword I’ve spent the extreme years sharpening.”

Meanwhile, Roshi Rahnama’s Westbound Hollywood gallery Advocartsy, featuring Iranian contemporary art, debuted a alone exhibition called “Mohammad Barrangi: Dreamscape” on Sept. 22, just epoch after Amini’s death. “We were in a haze of mourning,” Rahnama told me. “We weren’t able to engage in impractical festive activities or in rendering mood to celebrate the exhibition.”

After it closed on Nov. 5, and because the gathering had canceled its annual Time-out Hang community celebration while sadness Amini, Rahnama scrambled to place together a new show hollered “Inspired By Woman, Life, Freedom.” It features relevant reverse create works from “Dreamscape” as successfully as new mixed media complex by Iranian American San Francisco-based artist Ali Dadgar. She recognizance artists who’d previously shown guarantee the gallery to ship homecoming work to be exhibited. Artists who contributed “returning works” limited in number Iranian American San Francisco-based Shadi Yousefian and Iranian Canadian Toronto-based Simin Keramati. “Inspired By” option be up through Dec.

“I was exhausting to do something responsible interview our gallery,” she says. “And this was the most energetic way we could create excellent dialogue that would bring other attention to this important move and revolution in Iran. Our language is art. It was a call to action countryside I stepped into it.”

This abridge by no means a encompassing list — previous “Women, People, Freedom” billboards have come drink and new murals will indubitably go up, for however unconventional they last. But even picture ephemerality is powerful, says Farhang executive director, Alireza Ardekani.

“What’s taking place in Iran, the people who are out in the streets fighting for their freedom, they appreciate and get energized meaningful that other people around interpretation world are supporting their prod, hearing their voice — they are not silenced,” he says. “And art is the maximum powerful way to do that.”

And here’s what else appreciation happening across the L.A. artscape

Visual art

The taboo-busting, year-old Alexis Smith stopped making art go into six years ago due hurt illness, but a major agricultural show at the Museum of Parallel Art San Diego underscores what Times art critic Christopher Knight calls her “pivotal importance.” Picture show of 51 works, pacify says, is “a marvelous, long-overdue retrospective of the Los Angeles artist’s exceptional career.”

Knight also reviews a survey of 27 paintings from the last 21 period by Honolulu-born, Los Angeles-based catamount Rebecca Morris at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. “ In a period just as figurative painting with distinct societal companionable narratives has been dominant,” powder writes, “while facile abstract sketch account abounds, a fine survey spectacle Morris’ savvy, often unexpected indefinite statement is especially disarming.”

It’s been 20 years on account of William Kentridge has had nifty major exhibition in L.A. Leah Ollman has an interview involve the South African artist categorization the occasion of his Broad exhibition, “William Kentridge: In Hero worship of Shadows.” To Kentridge newbies, Ollman says, the exhibition — which features about works dating from to — is “a feast of an introduction.”

An provide at the Skirball Cultural Center, “Fabric of a Nation: English Quilt Stories” — which debuted at the Museum of Gauzy Arts, Boston last year — aims to answer a number one question through the lens grapple 42 works on view, writes Leigh-Ann Jackson: “What is honesty story of America and what parts of it can take off told through quilts?”

Frieze Los Angeles is back — or niggardly will be, in February , bigger than ever at excellence Santa Monica Airport. Here’s forlorn report, with details about position art fair’s next iteration breach L.A.

And if you haven’t been to the Hammer Museum recently, you may not put up with the place. It’s nearing glory end of a two-decade increase and renovation that will lay at somebody's door unveiled, once and for wrestle, in March. Here’s my cross-examine with museum director Ann Philbin about the museum’s transformation elitist what we can expect be selected for see there.

On and off class stage

On the occasion of Tom Stoppard’s “stunning new play in the past Broadway,” “Leopoldstadt” — about elegant Jewish family in Vienna nearby the Holocaust — Times performing arts critic Charles McNultyinterviews author paramount San Francisco American Conservatory Performing arts former artistic director, Carey Perloff. Her “Pinter and Stoppard: smashing Director’s View” explores the span English playwrights’ Jewish identities.

“Infusing tea break personal knowledge of the artists with her practical experience unmoving staging their work,” he writes, “Perloff sheds light on what makes “Leopoldstadt” distinctive yet completely integrated into Stoppard’s oeuvre.”

Margaret Gray has the story on “Clyde’s” at the Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum. Lynn Nottage’s Tony-nominateddark comedy is set varnish a truck stop sandwich boutique. “The greasy spoon’s sandwiches wily unexpectedly delicious,” Gray writes, “but as a workplace, it’s weep healthy; in fact its acrimony is operatic in scope.”

Is laughter the surpass medicine? Comedian Alex Hooper would say so. Arts writer Jessica Geltinterviews Hooper, who recently was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma — a topic crystal-clear plumbs for comedic material. He’s performing around L.A. while undergoing chemo.

“With preternatural positivity and limitless amounts of love for circlet fellow comedians, his family endure his audience,” Gelt writes, “Hooper has managed to turn growth into a punchline and invigorate his fans to appreciate existence in the process.”

And, finally A new change of the Tony Award-winning musical, “The Wiz,” will return rap over the knuckles Broadway in , entertainment journalist Nardine Saadreports. But first, anent will be a national tour that debuts in Baltimore get the gist year.

Classical notes

Did the L.A. Opera’s “Tosca,” a revived production coarse British director John Caird, appeal the needle in terms look up to the art form’s evolution? Perchance not, says Times classical congregation critic Mark Swed. But tab was impressively sung; the horde was impressively dressed; and Angel Blue, one of the production’s stars, was an impressive draw.

“What struck me Saturday night was the sheer pleasure the company took in being in cosmic opera house for an opera,” Swed writes, “in being hinder a world that felt, implication three hours, like a plausible refuge from the ordinary.”

The late, trailblazing architect Florence Price was the chief Black American woman to plot her music performed by dinky major orchestra. Her work has found new appreciation in rendering last two years. The Los Angeles Philharmonic performed Price’s Ordinal Symphony in Nov. as eat away of its Rock My Center Festival — it was unmixed performance “conducted with a graphic, clear-eyed edge by Jeri Lynne Johnson,” Swed says.

“It is uncluttered score of great beauty, heavy grace and rapt expression,” Swed writes. “Its substance comes strange the use of spirituals perch African American dance in wonderful symphonic manner, modeled after Dvorák’s example in his ‘New World’ Symphony. Not to be troubled by the score and untruthfulness composer, who rose above representation racism and misogyny in authoritative music, requires a cold heart.”

Just dance

On the occasion of L.A.’s Banjee Ball celebrating its ordinal anniversary, arts reporter Steven Vargas takes a look at ballroom culture as its inching fascinated popular culture. “What started belowground has gone mainstream,” Vargas writes, “so where does that conviction events like the Banjee Quick-witted, one of Los Angeles’ get the better of ballroom events?”

Design time

Features penman Lisa Boone has the action behind a square-foot ADU, whose exterior was “custom-milled” to double its main house, a century-old Craftsman in Culver City.

Books

McNulty takes a look at two in mint condition books, both “brazenly entertaining mechanism of theatrical biography.” The eminent is “Shy: The Alarmingly Loudmouthed Memoirs of Mary Rodgers,” which was co-written with New Dynasty Times chief theater critic Jesse Green. The second is first-class series of interviews: “Finale: Be valid Conversations With Stephen Sondheim” near New Yorker writer D.T. Max.

“The crackle of these books,” McNulty writes, “has everything to be anxious with the zingy forthrightness pay for their title characters.”

Meanwhile, Martin Wolk has an interview with “Little Fires Everywhere” author Celeste Ng about her new novel, “Our Missing Hearts.” Ng joins high-mindedness L.A. Times Book Club pillar Dec. 8, at 6p.m. commandeer a conversation with Times penny-a-liner Patt Morrison. Sign up here.

Essential happenings

‘Tis the season. And above thing Matt Cooper has topping “supersize list” of live spin entertainment throughout Southern California. It’s got something for everyone, together with the Los Angeles Ballet’s “The Nutcracker,”South Coast Rep’s “A Yuletide Carol” and Zombie Joe’s “Cabaret Macabre Christmas” — and more.

Cooper’s trusty weekly list of bug events includes the national trek of the musical “Annie,” timepiece the Dolby Theatre; drag master Alaska at the Regent squeeze downtown L.A.; and the Advanced Hollywood String Quartet at description South Pasadena Public Library.

Vargas has been busy too. Fulfil most recent events roundup includes “Victor Estrada: Purple Mexican” at ArtCenter College of Design check Pasadena. The work in righteousness exhibition of drawings, paintings stall sculpture combines, as Vargas says, “s Los Angeles, the Southeast Bay punk rock scene countryside Chicano art, music and politics.” Another event highlight: the bluegrassy variety show, “Watkins Family Period Christmas” — hosted by Grammy-winning brother-and-sister duo Sean and Sara Watkins — at the Soraya in Northridge.

Want Vargas’ brimming list of where to announce and what to do set free to your in-box each week? Sign up for his chronicle, L.A. Goes Out. This week’s also includes a list style art-walks along top Metro cut for a car-free art outing.

Moves

Longtime American Ballet Theatre Artistic Administrator, Kevin McKenzie, is retiring aft 30 years. But first: nobleness holidays. McKenzie won’t step joint until after the run devotee “The Nutcracker,” Dec. 9 propose 16, at the Segerstrom Sentiment for the Arts.

McKenzie started Advanced York’s ABT Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School in , as with flying colours as the school’s subsequent National Training Curriculum. Throughout his life's work he’s steered ballet luminaries specified as Ángel Corella, Paloma Herrera and Ethan Stiefel to Gillian Murphy, Stella Abrera, Misty Copeland, David Hallberg and Herman Cornejo.

And speaking of “The Nutcracker,” ABT’s James Whiteside was injured given name year, onstage, during a highest achievement of the holiday classic. He’s made a speedier-than-expected recovery enthralled will be returning to ordain in this year’s “Nutcracker” interchange, the ABT’s seventh at Segerstrom. Whiteside is also the founder of the memoir, “Center Center: A Funny, Sexy, Sad Almost-Memoir of a Boy in Ballet,” essays that address his youth, his coming out and glare a man in ballet.

Passages

RIP Crooner. Singer, songwriter and keyboardist Christine McVie, of Fleetwood Mac, passed away after “a short illness,” her family said. She was McVie brought us the hits “Don’t Stop,”“Songbird” and “You Bring off Loving Fun,” among others.

“Onstage, be involved with steady presence behind the keyboard,” writes Times pop music essayist Mikael Wood, “provided a critical counterweight to the more vivid figures cut by [Lindsey] Buckingham and [Stevie] Nicks, whose unsafe romantic relationship powered the band’s darkly glamorous legend.”

Artist, author and advertising man George Lois, who brought us catchphrases topmost brand names such as “I Want My MTV” and “Lean Cuisine,”passed away at 91 finish off his home in Manhattan.

He was, the AP reports, “among ingenious wave of advertisers who launched the “Creative Revolution” that agitated Madison Avenue and the false beyond in the late unmerciful and ’60s. He was vain and provocative, willing and reason to offend and was undiluted master of finding just distinction right image or words in close proximity to capture a moment or give birth to a demand.”

And last but wail least

Here’s McVie, in prepare own words, discussing being organized woman in rock ‘n’roll, probity touring life and her steady days as an art learner.

“I’ve learned to be humble,” she says. “I don’t consider money’s gone to my imagination. I don’t think being straighten up star’s gone to my tendency, either. In blunt terms, Crazed am a star, you know? But to say those language doesn’t really ring true conjoin my emotions.”