“Entanglement” by Laleh Motlagh at SoNa Chicago

Laleh Motlagh, installation view of “Entanglement Sculpture 2” (front) and “Entanglement 5″ (back)/Photo: Frank Geiser

Spending time with quiet, contemplative artworks is often a liberating experience. This helps me come to terms with our world of increasingly instantaneous expectations and horrifying sociopolitical atrocities; perseverance is made easier through honest comfort. In this way, Laleh Motlagh’s “Entanglement” at SoNA Chicago draws strength in opposition to the chaos of the world around it, asserting the importance of cyclical care in resolute whispers.

“Entanglement” is a show conceptually rooted in Motlagh’s practice of caring for her houseplants, of which she has well over a hundred. Having grown up in a household full of plants, this act of care is deeply intertwined with a sense of nostalgia and legacy: Her houseplants function as a kind of domestic reliquary, as household witnesses, and supportive co-residents. Motlagh’s work is informed by displacement and what it means to put down new roots, something she credits to the experience of living in Iran and Azerbaijan before migrating to the United States. As such, her dedication to caring for her houseplants is also a practice of belonging, of taking up space, and mirroring close attention to the needs of those around her. Motlagh’s artistic practice is care in the face of adversity, and her artworks function as documentation and observation of this practice.

Laleh Motlagh, installation view of “Entanglement 1-5”/Photo: Frank Geiser

Motlagh’s work is meditative: She uses formal structures to approach ineffable truths without intending to fully encompass them. This idea resonates most strongly within a silent, projected video of Motlagh kneeling in her backyard. In this performance for the camera, she, wordlessly and without moving, looks at the viewer with a gentle expression. Her outfit is entirely white, including a white headscarf. Dualistic and syncretic ways of looking at the world are integral to understanding Motlagh’s artwork: while her outfit is an intentional reference to the practice of Sufism, Motlagh also dons her headscarf as an act of solidarity with protestors’ continued struggle against compulsory hijab legislation in Iran.

Two sculptures suspended near SoNa’s entrance, titled “Entanglement Sculpture 1” and “Entanglement Sculpture 2,” are the most immediately eye-catching elements in Motlagh’s exhibition. In each sculpture, an open-faced, plywood box barely contains an enormous mass of twisting morning glory vines. While the occasional dried flower can be found amidst the tangles, each cluster feels like one chaotic, unbroken texture, especially in contrast to the neatly mitered rectilinear shapes that frame them. To the right of these boxes is a wall of simple but precisely constructed wooden panels with drawings on paper and vellum affixed to their surface. Each of the drawings is comprised of interlocking lines that mirror the vines in Motlagh’s sculptures. Several of these drawings are also layered on top of each other. This imbues each drawing with an element of time, as slight shifts in the surface of the vellum conceal and reveal different aspects of the drawings on paper beneath them.

Laleh Motlagh, installation view of “Cycles and Voids 1-5” /Photo: Frank Geiser

Motlagh’s drawings are observational but not perceptual: I am told each one is a blind contour drawing created by tracing a meandering path through the suspended morning glories. Knowing this, each individual drawing feels like an exercise in futility, as disentangling such an intimidating jumble of vines would be a herculean effort. When taken together, however, Motlagh’s drawings speak to the practice of making an individual attempt in spite of this impossibility. While the drawings feel sparse, or even minimal, they speak to a celebration of perseverance in impossible tasks. I can imagine many sociopolitical implications that connect to this practice, but Motlagh’s drawings are also firmly domestic. The morning glories in Motlagh’s sculptures came from the fence between her and her neighbor’s backyard. It is this same fence which sets the stage for her performance work, and thus the gesture of documenting her time in this space can also be understood as a form of reverence.

Laleh Motlagh, details of “Entanglement” installation on one of the windowsills at SoNa Chicago/Photo: Frank Geiser

Motlagh’s works are a visually concise reminder that our domestic lives are also entangled with events that affect us on a global scale. Much of her work also uses this understanding to investigate memory. On the left side of the gallery, Motlagh presents a grid of five diptychs titled “Cycles and Voids” constructed on hand-stretched linen canvases; each diptych represents memories she associates with a specific houseplant in her collection. The top panel of each pairing contains bits of leaves, seeds, or other small pieces of that specific houseplant arranged in a circle. The bottom panel of each pairing is an acrylic painting of the negative space in photos taken of the plant in situ. In the center of each painting, a circular void connects to the positive space of the panel above it. While each pairing celebrates and documents memories embodied by a single houseplant, these memories are also inextricably linked to the people Motlagh associates them with. They exist in a superposition of presence and absence—the memories in “Cycles and Voids” are as fractured and fragmentary as the detritus used to create them.

The passive, formal structures anchoring many of Motlagh’s artworks are somewhat misleading at first glance, as they are intentionally subtle. This is a special kind of camouflage, designed to blend into the background of daily life, waiting for careful observation to reveal the immense complexity Motlagh has imbued each artwork with. “Entanglement” is a state of being all things are beholden to, and Motlagh’s exhibition presents this with remarkable awareness.

Laleh Motlagh’s “Entanglement” is on view at SoNa Chicago, 1527 North Ashland, through July 20.