LEILA SABYANI
Abzu / Apsu
About the project
Abzu or Apsu the name of the underworld contains fresh fresh water in Mesopotamian myths. In the Sumerian religion, Abzu is characterized and regarded as a god. This later came to Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian religions. In the Sumerian language, water means ocean and zoo means deep. The statues are also taken from bridges and arches built on rivers.
About the artist
Leila Sabyani is a Tehran-born artist with a degree in architecture. Her projects include the first Fajr Fine Art Festival at MoCA, the International Glazed Tile and Ceramic Exhibition, sculptures for Alborz Ceramic and the Social Security Sports Club (2008); Sculpture Expo 90 at Shirin Art Gallery (2011); the British Museum Medal Show (2012); the second Izmir Art Biennial (2013); Like Breeze on Trees and an Eshraq Square sculpture (2014). In 2015, she assisted Mario Lopez in Kish and Alessio Ranaldi at BenQ, and curated Confessions of Zal. She later curated Apsu (2017), joined the executive teams of the third, fourth and sixth Tehran Stone Symposia, and was selected for the Florence Biennale (2017) and YATOO in South Korea (2018, 2019, 2022). She also joined the Izmit Residency and Kara exhibition (2019), the third Iranian National Stone Design Festival (2022), and the Helikon Residency and Kapsamin exhibition in Izmit (2024).