Erin Cluley Gallery is pleased to announce Shotor 〇 morghe (SHOH-tohr morgh) an exhibition of work by 2025 Cluley Projects Open Call Winner Leili Arai Tavallaei. Shotor 〇 morghe continues the artist’s exploration of cultural memory and familial archives through printmaking, sculptural assemblage, and figurative painting. Incorporating heirlooms and adages from across her multicultural heritage, Tavallaei’s practice brings together artifacts from Iranian and Japanese traditions into deft displays of emotional intimacy. Her new exhibition threads the line of historical preservation and honor. Translated memories from the artist’s ancestry form the base for a blended language representing her lived and inherited experiences.

Leili Arai Tavallaei’s practice incorporates techniques from printmaking, animation, and mixed-media collage. Her use of layering—whether paint, found objects, or drawing— build up texturally rich compositions while simultaneously mirroring the continual accumulation of memory. Tavallaei utilizes artistic methods to create tight-knit archives. Wrappers from Japanese confections, screenprints of her Mother’s Nokia mobile phone, and gift boxes from family members add to the artwork’s nostalgic weight. Shotor 〇 morghe gives the artist’s recollection a tangible presence in form, color, and abstract composition.

The title of the exhibition, Shotor 〇 morghe, combines the native languages of her parents: Farsi and Japanese. Shotormorghe is a compound Farsi word meaning "ostrich” and “〇” represents 丸 (Maru) translated from Japanese to “circle” or “zero.” Combining the Farsi words for Camel (Shotor) and Bird (Morghe), Shotormorghe references a Persian fable about two separate halves coming together to form a unique whole. Between two cultures, Tavallaei advocates for her singular nature, informed by, but not wholly beholden to her lineage. The Japanese 丸 (Maru) symbol, represented by “〇,” affirms the harmonious nature between the artist’s dual heritages as they intertwine art, life, and memory.

Tavallaei grew up in a blended household, receiving cultural traditions from her mixed Japanese and Iranian parents. Through a personal lens, her artistic practice explores the unseen ways parental heritage overlaps and coalesces in future generations. Tavallaei creates new rituals for genealogical conservation affirming art’s important place in creating new traditions. Recollection (2024) is a mixed-media painting featuring a pastel yellow kneeling subject, collaged candy wrappers, and a small painted drawer. The work’s central subject represents a mythical creature charged with protecting the artist’s emotional state and blended multiculturalism. Similar to the other works in Shotor 〇 morghe, Recollection generates new mythologies in celebration of memory’s abundant archives.

In her exhibition at Erin Cluley Gallery, Leili Arai Tavallaei explores the formal connections between artmaking and the honoring of ancestral histories. The artist’s work practices various methods of translation; translations of language, inherited objects, and family background. Personal ephemeras—recreated or used directly in her work—take on the moral weight cast onto them from Tavallaei’s lived reality. Through the use of interdisciplinary techniques, Shotor 〇 morghe conceptualizes art as a nexus of collective memory, documentation, and generational meaning-making.

An exclusive reading by the inaugural recipient of the Cluley Projects Arts Writing Mentorship, Chukwudi Ukonne will be held at the opening reception of Shotor 〇 morghe on May 17th. Ukonne will read his text “In Constant Translation: Leili Arai Tavallaei’s tender archive of memory” created in conjunction with Tavallaei’s solo presentation at Erin Cluley Gallery. Shotor 〇 morghe will be exhibited concurrently with current, an exhibition of new sculptures by Dallas-based artist Ryan Goolsby.