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Kamyar Bineshtarigh in ‘A Beast With Two Backs’ at The AVA Gallery, Cape Town
26 Jun 2025 (3 min) read
Collaborative works by artists Kamyar Bineshtarigh and Alka Dass feature in A Beast With Two Backs, a group exhibition curated by Grace Matetoa and Keely Shinners.
This collection of works is grounded by the curators' shared fascination with artist couples––couples who happen to be artists, or artists in a relationship. This exhibition is essentially a delving into couples whose respective practices are marked by a sense of collaboration, consciously or unconsciously.
It's very interesting to see how some couples have chosen to exhibit work they’ve made together, while others have decided to show one work each, side by side. Some works demonstrate shared sensibilities in aesthetic or theme, while others are very different stylistically.
Matetoa and Shinners explain: “With this in mind, our investigation has deepened into asking how love might exist as a corporeal presence among artists who create jointly.” They continue: “This could be labelled as the beast—a creature untameable but necessary in a shared journey of discovery. This is what led us to name this exhibition, A Beast with Two Backs, leaning upon what Gillian Rose would call "the work," the spectral third person that manifests in any relationship—that ghostly presence that is neither entirely you nor me but us – and how that may be represented in art.”
Participating artists alongside Bineshtarigh and Dass include: Dominique Cheminais and Zander Blom; Vusumzi Nkomo and Ndumii Mbala; Callan Grecia and Sivan Zeffertt; Gabriele Jacobs and Miró van der Vloed; Haroon Gunn-Salie and Lily van Rensburg; Guy Simpson and Wendy Fredriksson; Michael Tymbios and Kasia Stefańczyk; Mitchell Messina and Katie Thomas; Ian Grose and Emma Belsham; Kyle Morland and Nicola West; Wim Botha and Retha Erasmus.
The exhibition runs until 31 July 2025.
ABOUT Skies within your eyes
Skies within your eyes emerged from an organic collaborative exercise between the artists in Bineshtarigh’s now-demolished former studio in Salt River, Cape Town. The work marries processes particular to either maker: Bineshtarigh’s ink and bleach Farsi text layers itself against Dass’s cyanotype blue. Dass draws from archival family photographs, building a layered and intimate mythology of heritage, love, grief and familial ties. An image of Dass’s Godmother’s cousin peers through Bineshtarigh’s calligraphic gestures; the fading text is a Farsi translation of Forugh Farrokhzad’s ‘On Loving’, the first poem Bineshtarigh shared with Dass in the early months of their relationship.
The second featured work is titled Kamyar in the Crack (2024).