Elika Hedayat | "Panem & Circenses": Dastan+2

16 August - 13 September 2019 +2

Dastan is pleased to announce Elika Hedayat’s solo exhibition titled “Panem & Circenses” at Dastan+2. The exhibition will open on Friday, August 16, 2019, and will be open for public viewing through September 13, 2019. This is the first exhibition of works by Elika Hedayat at Dastan.
Elika Hedayat (b. 1979, Tehran, Iran) is a graduate of École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (2008), and Fresnoy, the National Studio for Contemplator Art (2010) in Paris. She lives and works between Paris and Tehran.
Through her artistic career, Elika Hedayat has used a wide plethora of artistic mediums, including drawing, documentary, animation, installation, and performance, to create “an imaginary world reflecting a dominant system looking for Utopia; a system which is fascinated by modernity, technology and media.” In her work, she creates an “ideological system becoming deformed until finding itself completely mutilated. Therefore, by tending tirelessly to find this Utopia, it reaches some kind of a chaotic and grotesque world - a real dystopia.”
The current exhibition features a series of drawings, paintings, and three animated works that have been created since 2018. The title of the exhibition is a Latin phrase that literally translated to “Bread and Circuses” or “Bread and Games”. The phrase is attributed to the Roman poet Juvenal*, who wrote during late first and early second century AD.
In his Satire X Juvenal writes: “... Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions —everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.”**

* “Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis”, known in English as Juvenal
** Culey, Sean A. Transition Point: From Steam to the Singularity. 2019: Matador Publishing.