Adab: Collecting within Chaos

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“The painter’s attention was collected in the reflection of her beauty, As he reached the hair flock, at last, he painted chaos.”
– King Mohammad Dara Shokuh

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The artist’s research into psychoanalysis, Manichaeism, and the Persian code of conduct, Adab. He collects, reconstructs, and resignifies epistemic frames of mind for navigation through time and space. Samiee claims that psychoanalysis, a climate of ideas rooted in psychology, is the only robust Neoplatonist discourse in the Western world. Manichaeism, a lost religion made up of a shared history stretching from Britain to Southeast China, is the origin of much of Sufi and mystic literature and art, while the Adab is a modus operandi that collects through the negation and negotiation of the aesthetic-ethical plane. Such produced prehistory is a framework through which both Samiee’s painting and curatorial practice may be contextualized.