“The Other Apartment” is a collaborative project between Pittsburgh-based artist Jon Rubin and Tehran-based artist Sohrab Kashani that occurs simultaneously in Kashani’s apartment in Tehran, Iran, and an exact replica of that apartment and all of its contents at the Mattress Factory Museum in Pittsburgh, U.S. For the past 11 years, Kashani has used his apartment as a space for exhibiting contemporary art and as an artist residency, one of the first of its kind in the country. From September 2019 through July 2020, Kashani and Rubin will operate the space together in “The Other Apartment,” producing exhibitions, programs, and events where every object, video, and performance that happens in one space is reproduced for the other, keeping both apartments identical across the 6,300 miles that separate them.
“The Other Apartment” functions as a series of theoretical and practical questions within the sad absurdity of our current political condition: What if there was more than one absolute reality; can you build a space that functions as a loophole around national borders and economic sanctions; and what gets lost and gained in the act of duplication?
“The Other Apartment” opens September 27 with a reception from 6-8pm.