Card Catalog No. 2, a Group Exhibition

18 July  – 1 August 2025

Artists: Ava Zendehroud, Amirbahador Bayat, Asra Golmohamadi, Elham Makiabadi, Amir Rahati, Zahra Motallebi, Sheida Gorjidooz, Fatemeh Ekhteraee Tousi, Maryam Noroozi, Mojgan Toosi, Tofigh Nikkhah Bahrami, Melina Khosravi, Armin Rezaei

Statement

Can Artworks Be Categorized?

How does the aesthetic experience, often rooted in impermanence, multi-layeredness, and ambiguity, adapt to pre-defined labels and frameworks?

From the earliest cataloging on clay tablets in Mesopotamia to today's digital classification algorithms, the desire to organize data has always been evident throughout history. What appears to be a drawer of identical cards is, in fact, an embodiment of decision-making: What is seen? How is it remembered? And under what title does it reside in the collective memory?

This raises the question: What possibilities for new readings emerge when categories are broken? Are classification systems merely neutral tools, or do they carry a hidden discourse?

In the second "Card Catalog" exhibition, this historical tool is re-examined not only as a practical object but also as a mental model that intervenes in how we encounter artworks. Engaging with an artwork is inherently a multi-layered, fluid, and sometimes ambiguous experience. In contrast, the card catalog aims to define the artwork within a system of concepts, titles, and names.

The card catalog can be a metaphor for the inner workings of our own minds. Each individual enters the exhibition with their mental card catalog, a set of categories, preconceptions, and unwritten criteria that influence how they experience the artwork. We put the classification system on display not to prove its correctness, but to pause at this mental archive, to see the patterns, and perhaps to create a disruption within them. We ask ourselves and you to challenge it. This exercise is an opportunity to measure the distance between what is experienced and what is recorded.