Pari Riahi’s Paper-Cut Art Show: Architectures of Collectivity
An example of one of the richly layered paper-cut images in Riahi’s exhibit. Photo: Barbara Pearson
Architectures and Collectivity by Pari Riahi is on exhibit at the John Olver Design Building Gallery until March 13, 551 North Pleasant Street. Gallery Hours: 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m, weekdays.
I was fascinated to read in her curriculum vitae that architect Pari Riahi’s first book (2015) concerned in part, the architectural treatises and drawings of Francesco di Giorgio Martini, known for his idealized planning concepts in the Renaissance. It would be an exaggeration to say that the two of us are the only people who know about Francesco di Girgio, but it is fair to say that he is not as well-known as the other more famous architects/artists of the Italian Renaissance such as Alberti, Leonardo, or Borromini. I wasn’t really surprised that his work has had some appeal to Riahi, an artist-architect-scholar in our midst today.
Riahi, who is Associate Dean of Academic Operations and Infrastructure in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts at UMass, where she is also Associate Professor of Architecture, previously taught at the Rhode Island School of Design.
The exhibit consists of a collection of photos, placed on a grid and accompanied by intriguing paper cut-outs. The work is drawn from a comparative analysis Riahi is working on about public housing projects in the suburbs of Paris, using historical research and visual analytical modes including photographs, drawings, and collages.
Because I had made a study of post-World War I housing estates around Paris as part of my own graduate work, I was curious to see if any of the places I studied would be featured in her show. But instead, as so often happens when we get involved in something new, what attracted me were the beautiful, framed images of the apartment blocks, literally reconfigured in layers of paper, like tiny toy theaters.
The opening was well-attended, and I was struck by the very careful grid of microfilament that set off the photographs of the housing estates and the marks on the floor that seemed to correlate with them. The revelation for me were the series of paper cut images exhibited that suggested that trees, shapes, windows and deep spaces were floating in and around the viewers, by the windows of the gallery.
The exhibit will be up until mid-March and is in the main lobby of the Olver Building, next to the Post and Bean Cafe. Those who are wanting to keep exploring beyond the show might like to read her article.
If it is accessible, take the elevator to the top of the wonderful Olver building and see if the garden is open to the public or take a walk in the rain gardens or permaculture gardens nearby.
