Tracing a Border
(Dissolved with the Sun)
Haley Darya Parsa
06.02.23-07.07.23
This exhibition is part of stop-gap project’s Open Window summer series. Artists were asked to propose projects that could be displayed in the gallery’s street-facing windows and responded to the idea of window space. Haley Darya Parsa’s exhibition will be on display from June-July. As the show is intended to be viewed from the exterior, we will not be having open gallery hours or first Friday receptions during the summer months (although you are welcome to stop by during those times). Instead, we welcome you to view the show at your own convenience—any day and time (during daylight hours)!
Tracing a Border (Dissolved with the Sun) presents an installation of cyanotypes on silk by New York–based artist Haley Darya Parsa. On view, in stop-gap project’s windows, will be a selection from the artist’s ongoing series, Tracing a Border, depicting the fence gates surrounding her house in New York and her family’s yard in Texas. Similar to the cyanotype process itself—an alternative photographic printing process activated by light—the installation becomes activated by the sunlight coming in through the window, interacting with and giving into the natural elements. Sunlight will also be a source of change over time: the prolonged, direct sun exposure will cause the images to fade slightly and gradually over the course of the exhibition and, in a small and quiet way, symbolize the dismantling of borders with the restorative power of the sun and of shared community.
As Parsa lives in the U.S. with much of her family in Iran and abroad, the sun, for her, becomes a border-crossing mechanism, encompassing both distance and connection as it travels between them. Using sunlight as a direct material in her work, she views the sun poetically and politically, considering larger ideas of immigration and separation, as well as growth and renewal.
Haley Darya Parsa works in a variety of mediums, engaging in painting, fabric-dyeing, cyanotypes, print, and sculpture. Parsa investigates the ways in which images, objects, and rituals embedded in personal histories can relate to a larger cultural context. Having grown up in Texas as Iranian-American, she places her family and heritage under an intimate meditative lens, reflecting on ideas of distance, separation, memorialization, and connection. Her work is both sentimental and critical, thinking about how we read, identify, and value things. Born in Dallas, Texas, Haley Darya Parsa (b. 1996) received her BFA from the University of Texas at Austin before moving to New York, NY where she currently lives and works. She has had recent solo shows at Third Room Project in Portland, OR and Winterfeldtstr 56 in Berlin, Germany. In 2022, Parsa’s work appeared in the Northeast issue 158 of New American Paintings. In 2021, Parsa’s work appeared in Art Maze Magazine and Maake Magazine.
The works on view, listed below, document the sun at various locations and intervals throughout the day, all from the past year:
Left Window (left to right, back to front):
Tracing a Border (Texas Sun at 4:34 PM), 2022
Tracing a Border (New York Sun at 4:37 PM & 5:04 PM), 2022
Tracing a Border (New York Sun at 4:34 PM), 2022
Right Window (left to right, back to front):
Tracing a Border (New York Sun at 5:52 PM), 2022
Tracing a Border (Texas Sun at 12:31 PM), 2022
Tracing a Border (New York Sun at 5:22 PM), 2022
Several of the works in the show were recently exhibited by The Studio Worldwide in a 2022 solo presentation in New York, NY and online.