Nastaran Shahbazi

The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises is a selection of paintings and drawings created over the last two years during my stay in Hong Kong. Most are inspired by real lives, and events dating from my childhood until the present day. Each work exists individually, but together they can be read like a novel – a long lifetime divided into different chapters. Their inherent darkness is not just black; it is also yellow, the color of Van Gogh’s sunflowers – so vivid and alive – red, green and blue. Yet the characters in these paintings and drawings are not hopeless: they are resilient and strong and some of them are even playing with the madness that exists
 n this world in which we live. They want to be loved and to love… they are mostly on the road, constantly changing destinations and countries, because they want to find a utopia to believe in. “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever….The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose….The wind goeth toward the south and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits….All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.”
-A quote from Ecclesiastes in the epigraph of The Sun Also Rises by Ernest
Hemingway (1926)