Iranian-American artist's cloth works reflect identity at Art Central

Iranian-American artist Elnaz Javani is displaying six distinctive coats at Hong Kong's Art Central festival, inviting reflection on themes of memory and Middle East conflict. Javani told the South China Morning Post that her work serves as a meditative space for Hongkongers amid rising global geopolitical tensions. The artwork is on show at Central Harbourfront until Sunday.

Elnaz Javani, an Iranian-American artist born in Iran in 1985 and now living in the United States, is showcasing a series of cloth artworks featuring six coats with distinctive features at the Art Central festival in Hong Kong. The pieces invite Hongkongers to reflect on themes of memory and conflict amid the ongoing war in the Middle East.

Javani told the South China Morning Post that her work also serves as a meditative space for Hongkongers at a time of rising global geopolitical tensions and represents her own past struggles with identity. “My ideas draw from personal memory but transform it into imagined narratives rather than direct documentation,” she said.

“I hope audiences take away a sense of the emotional complexity of lived experience; the ways memory, displacement and personal history are carried through the body, objects and materials.”

The artwork is currently on display at Art Central, which runs until Sunday at Central Harbourfront.

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