Ali Seradge: A Traitor’s Travels, January 2021

A Traitor’s Travels
a solo exhibition by Ali Seradge
Jan 9-30, 2021
Opening Jan 9, 2021

Untitled (the wake) by Ali Seradge

“The parables of the 1980’s Transformers cartoon are not lost on Ali Seradge. After resources dried up and an endless war drove them from their home planet of Cybertron, it was clear the situation would go unresolved without a landing on the Earth. Facing further violent conflict and near extinction their travels to distant, greener pastures failed to outpace their troubles. They arrived as others and were forced to disguise themselves in order to resolve their conflicts. The rest of their story mirrors our own because that is what sci-fi does. It holds the mirror and transfigures the players in our own drama. This hallucinatory trick prevents an instant aversion and allows empathy to seep in by skirting the blades of our own biases.”

For his installation at COOP, Ali Seradge brings recent paintings and works on paper drawn from a visual language of robots, chimera, aliens, and monsters to enumerate an emotional log of a life lived this past year.

For a closer look click on image*

BIO:
Ali Seradge is an Iranian-American from Oklahoma City. He currently lives and works in Chicago. Seradge utilizes the framework of “old world” myths and examines them with a contemporary critical eye. He incorporates ideas of Persian ornament, North American flesh, and borderless culture in his work.

As a 2nd generation American, he acts as an outsider between worlds. Not quite Iranian and definitely perceived as not quite American, Seradge finds himself in the limbo many children of immigrants inhabit. While many choose one side over the other, and some embrace both, Ali stares into the limbo. In that swirling void of culture, he believes lies the future of the still nascent American culture.