Art exchange

In many ways, artist Sara Rahbar's career started in her mother's dining room.

"I just kept adding more and more tables, trying to get as much space as I could," said Rahbar, 34, the daughter of Mansooreh Dorudi, the owner of Persian Tea Room in Little Neck.

Today the table in Rahbar's studio in nearby Great Neck is almost completely covered with with her work, part of what she calls her "War Series" incorporating the standard currency of conflicts around the world – guns, knives and bullets – with everyday objects like wooden shoe forms.

Part of a family that emigrated to Queens from Iran after the Islamic Revolution and the beginning of a 10-year Iran-Iraq war, Rahbar's work partly reflects a struggle to find truth even amidst death and destruction, she said.

"Coming from a place like I come from, there's always been turbulence," she said. "My work is about sorting out something. There's opportunity in devastation."

Rahbar hails from a family with a definite artistic bent -- as well as a strong work ethic. Both her and her younger brother, Arash, 29, grew up working in the kitchen and dining room of her parents' Little Neck and Flushing restaurants.

According to Arash, their mother is most proud of their artistic achievements, particularly of Rahbar, who has had her work shown at galleries from Dubai to Vienna to Queens. "My mother gets tears in her eyes when she looks at [Sara's] art because of all we went through to get here," he said.

In 2006, Rahbar was asked to complete an installation on the intensifying conflict in the Middle East for the Queens Museum of Art Biennal. Struggling to find a way to mirror the human toll of the Iraq conflict on both civilians and soldiers, she decided to enlist the help of her brother to punch holes in the wall, smear dirt and scatter broken objects.

"Soldiers coming back from the war came to the exhibit and cried, saying, 'This is what it looks like,'" Rahbar said. 

However, it might be Rahbar's "Flag Series," which mostly includes deconstructed American emblems, that best frames a perspective shared by other Queens natives, many of whom come from a patchwork of different nations, cultures and religions living in an adopted country that sometimes fails, sometimes succeeds in embracing them all.

"I think we're all in it together and that's it," she said.