Belly Laugh at a Funeral and the Dialectics of Grief

Banner Image: Installation view of 'Belly Laugh at a Funeral' in U.S. Bank Gallery at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Image courtesy of Lindsey Scharold.

◼︎ ◼︎ ◼︎ ◼︎ ◼︎ 

Ziba Rajabi’s dyed fabric installations are the centerpiece of the latest solo exhibition in Mia’s MAEP gallery, dedicated to Minnesota-based emerging contemporary artists. “Belly Laugh at a Funeral” invites viewers into an embodied experience of grief and its many waves. Bringing together Rajabi’s background in drawing and fiber works, “Belly Laugh” prominently features works on fabric laden with graphic symbols.

In a short preamble to the exhibition, wall text describes a funeral, grief’s overwhelming sensations, and an eruption of hearty laughter—which the text notes as an involuntary “manic defense.”

Some say that time unfurls in a successive progression of days because we cannot contain all the experiences of time at once—and it must be the same way with grief. A departure from grief, in the form of a belly laugh, is inevitable. It is, as the wall text says, a bodily response, a survival instinct.

In the first room of the gallery hang several brightly colored tapestries made from muslin. The standout piece is “Return of Hope” featuring a large applique of a lilly of the valley, in which each flower is a skull. While a lily of the valley is delicate, the skulls put a sinister twist on an otherwise lighthearted form, like the inverse rose-colored glasses through which grief would have us look at the world. At the same time, as Rajabi must have intended it, the flower emerging alongside symbols of death speaks to the coexistence of loss and hope, of the former eventually transforming into the latter.

 

Images: Detail view (top image) and installation view (bottom image) of 'Return of Hope' by Ziba Rajabi. Image courtesy of Lindsey Scharold.

In the second room of the gallery, a long stretch of astroturf set with cushions lies beneath rows and rows of kaleidoscopically-dyed muslin forms suspended above. Here, Rajabi succeeds in creating a convincing experiential installation, “Kotal.” An excellent soundtrack, written and performed by Aida Shahghasemi, references an Iran-Iraq war song which the plaque says is “associated with both joy and sadness” and illustrates the emotional energy of the exhibition, tying it all together.

The song begins minimal and mournful, then swells to a rhythmic and energetic groove—its tone, like the belly laugh, an inevitability, like the result of the body’s instinct to move through emotions and shake off the proverbial dust.

Each ornate floating cylinder in “Kotal” consists of panels of hand-dyed fabric stitched with symbols: a droplet, a flame, a candle, an eye. The way their magenta, cyan, and green dyes swirl, billow, and bleed into one another on delicate fabric resembles the way the many sensations of grief blend together in distinct, yet inseparable ways. The forms hover still and quiet, extending far into the air, giving the objects’ an ethereal quality.

 

Image: Detail of 'Kotal' at U.S. Bank Gallery in 'Belly Laugh at a Funeral'. Image courtesy of Lindsey Scharold.

With so many sculptural arrangements collected within the space, “Kotal” has a potent communal and spiritual energy. At the same time, each spirit-like hanging above the cushions feels private and singluar—in the way that grief is a universal experience despite the individual variance in the causes and character of our pain.

Dialectical in nature, the exhibition seems to synthesize opposites at every turn: laughter/grief, singular/communal, death/hope, etc. Such juxtaposition could be jarring or abrasive—but Rajabi’s work earnestly and gently melds the sorrowful and the lighthearted. Through bright and colorful dyes, light and luminous materials, and a score which transitions from somber to anthemic, Rajabi has created an installation which proves her point: A funeral might not seem like a place for a belly laugh, but it was always meant to be there.◼︎ 

“Belly Laugh at a Funeral” will be on view at U.S. Bank Gallery at the Minneapolis Institute of Art up through October 25th. The gallery is located at  2400 Third Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55404. To see more work by Ziba Rajabi, check out her website at zibarajabi.art and follow Ziba Rajabi on Instagram @zibarajabi.