Shagha Ariannia: Who Sings the Nation-State?

As a post 9/11 Iranian immigrant to the United States, Los Angeles-based artist Shagha Ariannia explores the complex landscape of nationhood through questions of citizenship, national identity, and the fantasy of immigration in the exhibition Who Sings the Nation-State? Borrowing its title from a 2007 book by seminal feminist and cultural studies theorists Judith Butler and Gayatri Spivak, Ariannia responds to related themes of language, politics and belonging through drawings, paintings and a video installation, itself part performance and part storytelling.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.