Factory Installed 2019

His site-responsive process begins with salvaging local materials from the waste steam that bear the symbolic, indexical, and poetic resonance with what he identifies as the toxic underbelly of American culture.

Aggregating these waste materials into networks of provisional assemblage, he weaves surveillance equipment through the sculpture such that it captures people who approach the work.

This flower is known commonly as Queen Anne's Lace.

These plants were gathered from sites around the city of Pittsburgh and were woven together to form an interlaced structure of fabric.

Both pieces explore site-specific aspects of music and add visual elements. The harpsichord work is about the balance between being a classically-trained composer and contemporary queer artist, and where those identities overlap.

The choir piece is his first vocal work to explore singers moving in formations outdoors. He wants the movements and the text to anchor the music into a specific place and time, as well as to be a tribute to Barbara and the creative spaces she has made possible.

For the past 11 years, Kashani has used his apartment as a space for exhibiting contemporary art and as an artist residency, one of the first of its kind in the country.

When the two apartments are activated in the US and Iran, The Other Apartment will house concurrent art ventures, producing exhibitions, programs, and events—in each case, every object, video, and performance that happens in one space is meticulously duplicated for the other.

Following a methodology of surrealist automatism—a process of suppressing conscious control over the process of creating—the formation of the space and its representation display complex, structured, and peculiarly playful relationships between the intuitive and the psychological, between the human body and the subconscious.

The piece intertwines hand-built structures, paintings and sculptures made from humble materials with video and audio elements in part by solar panel technology.

He cites the history of art and Indigenous artistic practices; of fashion and the queer club scene of the last forty years; of the Mattress Factory itself; and of his own fifteen year practice.

Creating a series of custom textiles with images borrowed from these diverse sources, Mar collages, sews, and paints this material, and ultimately brings together these distinct imageries to derive entirely new contexts from the recombined originals.

The quote, and Kondo's empire in general, is a reminder of our complicated relationships to the things around us, and how we cling to things – but also, how they sometimes cling back.

While his works often feature architectural constructions, they are less specific locales and more like the terrain of half remembered dreams. The installation is about the story of a house and its inhabitants. The memory of something that can only be found in parts. The viewer will never see the whole picture at once, but must piece together the information they have received.