Telematic Media Arts
presents

Breathe the Sun

A Mythopoetic Multimedia Installation

Shaghayegh Cyrous

September 11th - October 31st, 2026

Opening reception: Friday,  September 11th, 6 – 9
Closing reception: Saturday, October 31st, 2 – 4

Presented in Conjunction with Through the Sun 
August 15th - September 19th at Reisig and Taylor Contemporary
Los Angeles, California

Exhibition Statement

Breathe the Sun is a multimedia installation by Los Angeles-based Iranian artist Shaghayegh Cyrous, which appeals to ancient Persian origin stories to address the contemporary experience of being caught between social, political, religious, and geographical forces. Through ancestral memory, mythology, and inherited forms of wisdom, the work becomes a study in resilience and a search for light and harmony amidst instability and conflict.

At the center of the exhibition is a large video projection, which begins with the deep inhalation and exhalation of someone breathing on the soundtrack.  The breath here resonates as the simplest form of coming to be and passing away: a cycle, a return, a beginning again.

The piece is rich with color, material textures, and symbolism.  A woman stands in a river, pouring water from a jug.  An angel holds out a ring to a woman who clasps it in her hands.  A circle of performers sing and dance around around a fire pit.  The camera focuses on the details of leaves and flowers, a burning red feather, hands painted the rusty red of rhubarb, fingers on a lute, charcoal writing on the shell of an egg, a golden ball tossed in the air, pomegranates and apples.

The material details in the exhibition’s central video are complemented by sculptural objects throughout the gallery.  A lock, a braid, a cypress tree spinning in place, and a chorus of faces painted on fabric, which seem to be watching the video alongside the audience.  On another wall, hangs the large scroll of a painting on fabric, echoing the images and stories evoked on the screen with birds flying, flowers, a noblewoman with a water jug, and a sphynx.

Texts and imagery in the Installation are drawn from ancient Persian culture and the Zoroastrian religion, dating back over 3,500 years ago.  The work is an assertion of Iranian cultural identity at a time when the United States is waging a brutal elective war on the country.  It also is a expression of protest and resistance against the Islamic Republic that rules in Iran, who treats these ancient traditions as a threat to their authoritarian brand of Islam.

At the same time, the symbolic imagery in the show is deeply personal, marrying ancient stories with the artist’s own experience, wrestling with her feelings of displacement, anger, and fear, and the struggle to find a home in a world torn asunder.

The result is a richly sensual and playfully fanciful meditation on the ancient struggle between light and darkness, creation and destruction, good and evil, in terms that are at once metaphysical, social-political, and deeply personal.

• Clark Buckner, Curator

Event

Artist Bio

Shaghayegh Cyrous is a multidisciplinary artist whose immersive practice spans multimedia installation, performance, painting, and social practice. Rooted in mythology, nature, and social and political power dynamics, her work explores identity, belonging, and the spiritual threads that connect us across time and culture. Through poetic imagery and theatrical environments, Cyrous brings forward hidden stories passed down through myth, poetry, and acts of resistance, creating dreamlike spaces where the ancient and contemporary meet.

Cyrous received her BA in Visual Art from Science and Culture University of Tehran and her MFA in Social Practice from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Cyrous has exhibited and performed internationally at venues such as Tehran MOCA, the British Museum in London, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, Institut für Alles Mögliche in Berlin, Germany, the Anchorage Museum in Alaska, Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, and Netflix’s Invisible Billboard and the billboard of the City of West Hollywood in Los Angeles.

See: www.shcyrous.com