“Preview is a supporting foundation for repetition, searching for connections, and seeking the meaning of repetition—a relationship based on causality.” -Nava Sabetimani
Nava Sabetimani, born in 1989, is a Tehran-based artist who mainly focuses on figurative abstraction and plays with the human anatomy in artistic style. She graduated with a Master’s in agriculture at age 26 and then decided to pursue her innate passion- art. She studied for a BA in painting at the Islamic Azad Art University of Tehran. “At first, my practice mainly involved using pen and ink on cardboard, but my interest in oil painting developed over the past year and a half.”
Nava Sabetimani has risen in the Iranian contemporary art scene in the past years. She has exhibited at many galleries, including the featured project “Preview” in a solo exhibition in Tehran, Iran. In 2023, she participated in group exhibitions, including “The Last Savior” at ADAP Gallery and The KHOR Art Initiative at SARAI Gallery, Iran. In 2022, she exhibited at The 12th ANNUAL “Montakhab-E Nasle No,” Homa and Shirin Gallery, Tehran. Sabetimani was awarded several international awards, including the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, and exhibited in London in 2023.
Left: Preview No. 45, 2023 Oil on canvas. 50 x 40 cm
In his book, “In the Search of That Lonely Word,” Yadollah Royai writes: “Variation is a result of helplessness, a continuation to it. A continuation of a beginning that has seen its own end and yet has seen nothing. Turning its completion into a fire that will burn it away. Burning in the unsaid words means the spoken learns from the unsaid, or from what cannot be said, when unsaid words remain unsaid, on the verge of being spoken. Variation wants to take shape, to become a shape, but wanting isn’t always achieving… so Variation remains, in its own shape: a result of defeat”. The ‘Preview’ artworks are my variations. The results of my defeated and surrendered works that have seen their end without seeing anything, I have learned through all the defeated and surrendered.
Left: Preview No. 12, 2022 Oil on canvas. 20.5×30 cm
Preview is a supporting foundation for repetition, searching for connections, and seeking the meaning of repetition—a relationship based on causality. Kierkegaard also notes: “for what is repeated has been, otherwise it could not be repeated, but precisely the fact that has been gives to repetition the character of novelty.”
Preview is a starting point for investigating the subject of repetition. Where does repetition come from? According to Kierkegaard, we repeat our mistakes only because we do not commit them impeccably. This can signify a deep relationship between repetition and defect, but it also immediately raises another question: “Does lack of repetition signify perfection?”
