Artist: Giselle Daneshmand
Exhibition: Flight PS752 and Flight 655
Media: Concrete, Realism Art
Gallery: LBSU Art Gallery
This is Giselle Daneshmands art piece. Her art piece took up the whole art gallery. Although it does take up the whole gallery, it isn’t a very complicated piece. Giselle is a graduate student and is in the school of sculpture. She hopes to become a sculpture, although she isn’t even too sure about that. Her art piece can be found in the LBSU Art Gallery. Her work consists of concrete tiles laid down on the floor. The tiles were organized in the same way the flight seats were organized. She seemed to be very into her work because when I asked one question she told me a lot. She did a lot of research on Iranian burials and customs. She hopes to one day be a sculptor and show reality in her art with things going on. Her work also consisted of texts which explained everything that happened on the flights and she also had a text where she displayed the names of all the people that passed away on the Ukrainian Flight PS752.
Her art piece is made out of concrete. The concrete is gray like concrete should be, with letters on every single tile. She said that she liked the transparent paper, which is why she chose to write the names of people on the plastic paper. The concrete blocks were evenly spread out. The distance between the tiles was symmetrical. There were huge white painted walls that had the flight numbers painted on them. The concrete can easily be broken because it isn’t big nor thick but they look finely made. The letters look nicely pressed and evenly printed on. The tiles are square and the big walls are rectangles.
Giselle took her inspiration from within. She wanted to express and demonstrate Iranian culture by making the stones out of concrete. She mentioned a custom with burials and after a certain time period. She said her art represents the 60-day ritual, which is why she made the tiles out of concrete. People get together in order to remember what happened, which is what she intended to do for her art. She wanted to remember what happened with Flight PS752. She wanted to appeal to our emotions by exposing us to a burial tradition and while it might not have been truly emotionally appealing, it did offer us the chance to mourn for the people that were shot down in Iran.
In sum, I think that she did a very good job of representing the culture of the burials. She wanted to express the idea of how some countries react. Flight 655 was shot down by America in Iranian land, while Flight PS752 was shot down by the Iranian military. I admire how she allowed the viewer to take part in remembering the 170+ people that died on the plane. When I first saw this piece, I was confused and did not understand. When I went out to find the artist I told them if that was the art piece or if they were setting up for something and the person I talked to was the artist and told me it was the art. It seemed confusing but with her explanation, it makes sense what she was doing.
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