Visual Pattern Design & Artistic Collaboration

Exhibitions: Hamzianpour & Kia Gallery — Los Angeles, USA | September – October 2022

Red Barn Project Space — California, USA | March 2024

As the designer and creator of visual motifs for Red Web, Elahe Panahi collaborated on a framework that introduces new formal possibilities within traditionally celebrated textile art. This exploration of contemporary patterns and traditional techniques gained international recognition through its presentation at Hamzianpour & Kia Gallery in Los Angeles (2022) and subsequently at the Red Barn Project Space in California (2024).

The project engages with both figurative and conceptual strategies—ranging from references to traces of insect intervention, to direct collaboration with local weavers in the development of new textile patterns—thereby questioning notions of preservation, temporality, and the futility of confining the present within the past.

Beyond its formal exploration, the project also reflects on power dynamics embedded within cultural and working structures, particularly in relation to gender and the presence of an outsider within traditionally male-dominated weaving workshops in Yazd, Iran. Intervening in local craft traditions becomes not only an act of formal transformation, but also a way of engaging with the invisible social networks that sustain these practices.

These themes, particularly those concerning women’s position within cultural and professional structures, are central to Panahi’s collaborative artistic practice.

With: Negar Farajiani

Photos: Troy Small, Mahmoud Kashfipour