Works from Shahryar Nashat solo show ‘Bad House’ @rodeo_gallery, which ended last month. This was the first show in the gallery’s new London site and marked the first time one of its artists was offered a chance to produce an exhibition spread across London and its space in Piraeus. 

In a former garage-turned-bar, this show is extremely relevant to today’s pandemic, addressing capitalism, survival of the fittest, an inherent violent nature vs learned behaviour, a fragile-yet-resilient manner, pathos, family bonds, and human bodies and skin, in depictions of x-rays, prosthetics, meat wrapped in cling film with existential and real text messages, and a maquette of a mind. 

The show is disconcerting, and necessarily so. I think today we have become immune to numbers, trajectories, curves, and death tolls which serve as statistics rather than human lives. 

Said Nashat: ‘Mainstream cultural representation of the human body privileges a homogeneous and wholesome body. I have always searched to represent bodies that sit outside those traditional ideals. The bodies I’m interested in might have diverse motor functions, cosmetic interventions, and applications… That’s why I like wounds or prosthetics. They signal injury and, therefore, anomaly. Limbs are similarly interesting. Framed away from the rest of the body, they question it, while also allowing some psychological distance from the notion of persona. For me, this is where you open the door for desire and projection.’