Maryam Monalisa Gharavi – Page 9 – The New Inquiry

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi

is an artist, poet, and cultural technologist whose work explores the interplay between aesthetic and political valences in the public domain. Solo/group exhibitions, performances, and expanded publications include Nottingham Contemporary, Pioneer Works, Parasol Unit, Serpentine Cinema, Framer Framed, Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Art Dubai, New Museum, Pacific Film Archive, Sonic Acts, Triple Canopy, Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, The Poetry Project, Women and Performance, The White Review, Art in America, The Literary Review, Asymptote, Circumference, Brooklyn Public Library, among others. She has served as artist-in-residence at Trélex Poetry Residency (France), Sonic Acts (Netherlands), Residency Unlimited (U.S.A.), Wysing Arts Centre (U.K), Industry Lab (U.S.A.), Delfina Foundation (U.K.), Darat al Funun (Jordan), among others. She completed a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Film & Visual Studies at Harvard University and an M.F.A. in Film/Video at Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, and held a postdoctoral Fulbright and Visiting Professorship at Birzeit University. She was a Lecturer at New York University and Northeastern University from 2019 to 2021; at Harvard University from 2012 to 2017; and has served as visiting faculty/studio artist at Valand Academy, Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University, Bard Microcollege, among others. Book publications include a translation of Waly Salomão’s Algaravias: Echo Chamber (Ugly Duckling Presse), nominated for a PEN Award for Poetry in Translation; The Distancing Effect (BlazeVOX); and Bio (Inventory Press). Artist books include Apparent Horizon 2 (Bonington Gallery); Alphabet of an Unknown City (Belladonna*), Secret Catalan Poem (The Elephants), Mohammad Wikipedia Book (Recess), Dictionary of Night, co-authored with Mirene Arsanios (Ashkal Alwan), and Oil News 1989-2020, co-authored with Sam Lavigne (Sonic Acts). Her translation of Salomão’s Border Fare is forthcoming in 2024 (World Poetry Books). She is Editor Emeritus of The New Inquiry, where she previously served as Editor-at-Large. She founded South/South, cited as "one to watch" by the Los Angeles Times, and authored 500+ posts independently between 2009-2012 and at TNI between 2012-2023. She is the founder and principal of Oil Research Group (ORG), a one-woman collective exploring coterminous oil and data environments at the heart of "data is the new oil." ORG regularly collaborates with artists, scientists, economists, indigenous environmentalists, and host art institutions. She lives and works in New York.

Five Questions with Dan Beachy-Quick

By Maryam Monalisa GharaviJuly 13, 2012

When the breath was loud and long enough, I could simply cut out the section of tape and splice it back together. After 4+ hours of doing this, I looked down, and saw these ¼ inch sections of tape all of which contained this man inhaling for another breath. The ground was littered with his

Field Notes on Fashion and Occupy (Part Two)

By Maryam Monalisa GharaviJuly 9, 2012

Women's Wear Daily: 'Graffiti lettering adds realism to the disheveled sign.'

Five Questions with Lisa Russ Spaar

By Maryam Monalisa GharaviJune 29, 2012

What makes a habit "bad"? A rut of overusing genitive-link metaphors. An addiction to certain kinds of low-end television, like The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

Iranophobia 2.0

By Maryam Monalisa GharaviJune 20, 2012

One might come to cynically expect the trickle-down discriminatory treatment Iranians (including those with U.S. citizenship, which both Sabet and Jafarzadeh retain) from the government, who views Iran as its number-one enemy. Facing it while picking up an iPhone at the mall is disdain cut from an unexpected cloth.

Five Questions with Pierre Joris

By Maryam Monalisa GharaviJune 15, 2012

Courage is whatever.

Field Notes on Fashion and Occupy (Part One)

By Maryam Monalisa GharaviJune 12, 2012

Fashion is endowed with the potential to inform a political reality because fashion comes from people. The way people self-organize is always impacted by the external expression of social and political relationships, between police/denizen, publication/reader, store owner/consumer, designer/industry.

In Defense of Spontaneous Contestation and/or Beauty

By Maryam Monalisa GharaviMay 19, 2012

Much more surprising than getting pushed around by museum security was the realization that an institution devoted to procuring objects for people to look at was actively blocking their view of a live event, happening in front of our very living eyeballs.

Five Questions with Eileen Myles

By Maryam Monalisa GharaviMay 11, 2012

Genres for me are just a way in which we are controlled, protected I suppose but I'm not a writer to be protected at all.

Avoid All Demonstrations as a Precaution

By Maryam Monalisa GharaviApril 28, 2012

In lieu of alerts warning students from recently bombed or attacked sites in Baghdad and Kandahar or ongoing protests in Kuala Lumpur, the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) just issued students a detailed alert about upcoming U.S.-based May Day general strike actions.

Five Questions with Jaswinder Bolina

By Maryam Monalisa GharaviApril 27, 2012

Arabic always looks like rippled water to me, Hebrew like a city skyline turned sideways, Punjabi and Hindi like vines dangled from a lattice, Chinese and Japanese dialects like feathers and bones.

Some Southern Maladies

By Maryam Monalisa GharaviApril 23, 2012

'Let's drive south and never come back, never see the simulacra again...'

Drones are Paranoid Androids

By Maryam Monalisa GharaviApril 19, 2012

There is an entire cottage industry of Bush-era movie-making. If a Michael Bay or a Spielberg were to concoct the spectacle of a drone movie, what would it even show?

Five Questions with Anna Moschovakis

By Maryam Monalisa GharaviApril 13, 2012

Coffee and chocolate or tea and toast?

Friendly Squirrels

By Maryam Monalisa GharaviApril 12, 2012

A chain email forward from my father.

Jul, One Year Later

By Maryam Monalisa GharaviApril 4, 2012

Juliano Mer-Khamis was killed one year ago today when a masked gunman shot him as he sat in his red Citroën.

From Empty Signifiers to A Hoodie is Like a Sign

By Maryam Monalisa GharaviApril 3, 2012

To paraphrase Achebe, Things (Just) Fall Apart.