Between Then and Now

12–30 December 2025

Curated by Maryam Majd Art Projects (MMAP)

Vali Gallery, Tehran

Maryam Majd Art Projects (MMAP) in collaboration with Vali Gallery presents Between Then and Now, a process-based exhibition by Azine Nouban that reengages two formative bodies of work from her three-decade practice. Through selection of paintings on paper and canvas, mixed-medias on cardboard, and a newly produced video loop, the exhibition examines how the artist’s visual language, conceptual concerns, and personal history have evolved across time and context.

Between Then and Now brings together works from different stages of Azine Nouban’s artistic trajectory to explore how past ideas can be reactivated, reinterpreted, and transformed through a contemporary curatorial approach. The exhibition reflects MMAP’s ongoing interest in examining archival materials, artistic memory, and the ways in which returning to earlier projects can reveal new meanings and positions.

“365 Days, 365 Roses”, the oldest series revisited in this show, is a seminal year-long project involved the daily painting of a single rose. Originally conceived as a personal commitment to consistency and discipline, the series evolved into a visual archive shaped by travel, loss, and shifting emotional states.

After over two decades of committed work in an absolutely different professional field, Azine’s creative exploration deepened profoundly with the “Fear and Hope” series, a significant body of work conceived and executed during a period of physical and emotional isolation in a small studio. Though disconnected from an art community, galleries, or fellow painters, Azine committed to this private ritual, painting late into the quiet nights after the day’s many responsibilities, including caregiving and consulting work, had ended.

Whereas earlier rose paintings were painstakingly detailed and documentary—like scientific illustrations—this new series embraced looseness, spontaneity, and emotional rawness. She painted directly with color, often bypassing preliminary pencil sketches, allowing for visible brushstrokes, drips, and unfinished gestures that revealed the layers of making. Some canvases lingered in an embryonic state, while others developed into more recognizable, yet still imperfect, floral forms.

In the original “Fears and Hopes” series, this shift toward expressive immediacy was accompanied by a nightly practice of creating time-lapse recordings in her isolated studio. Each evening spent painting was documented through the quiet choreography of her movement across the room—brushes lifted, canvases turned, hesitations, accelerations, and pauses captured through the camera’s patient witnessing. These recordings functioned both as a personal archive and as an extension of the work itself, revealing the physical rhythm, vulnerability, and persistence embedded in the act of painting. They further reflect her enduring commitment to documentation and her instinct to trace the life of a work not only in its final state, but throughout its unfolding.

After 30 years of being away from the art world and not exhibiting, in this exhibition, Azine Nouban revisits her earlier body of work to deepen and reinterpret ideas that have played significant roles in her career. This return creates a dialogue between continuity and change, enabling the artist to address questions that previously could not be articulated. Through this process, Nouban engages with themes of time, persistence, identity, and personal and collective memory.

MMAP’s curatorial objective is to demonstrate how a contemporary framework can activate an artist’s earlier visions. Rather than focusing on individual artworks as fixed objects, the exhibition positions them as markers in a longer creative journey. Between Then and Now presents Nouban’s works not as historical nor nostalgic artifacts, but as living documents that testify to a shift in her artistic language, personal experience, and conceptual orientation. The revisiting becomes an introduction to a renewed artistic phase and a narrative of return.

By bringing together works spanning thirty years, Between Then and Now offers a cohesive reflection on the evolution of an artist’s practice. The exhibition highlights continuity, rupture, and the productive tensions between memory and transformation. It signals a renewed chapter in Nouban’s trajectory and affirms MMAP’s commitment to context-based, research-driven curatorial work.

Azine Nouban (b. 1962, Tehran) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans painting, drawing, and time-based media. Her practice explores ritual, memory, and the psychology of repetition. She has exhibited in Iran, France, and the United States.