Review: Imagined by Iranians amid war, made by artists in L.A.: How a powerful show was born

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Set us as preferred The group exhibition “To Share a Stomach” is a bit like the children’s game Telephone, in which a phrase, whispered from person to person, inevitably comes out a bit garbled.Urgently conceived by curator Aram Moshayedi in March, on the heels of the latest U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran, it features works envisioned by 25 Iranian artists that were fabricated with varying degrees of collaboration by 24 counterparts here in the U.S.Hampered by significant internet blackouts, displacements and the loss of studios and artwork in Iran, as well as an extremely compressed timeline (just five months), the results are understandably rangy and uneven.

Yet the show, now on view at the Brick through Sept.19, is an achingly beautiful meditation on the difficulty of communication and the shared goodwill that intermittently, imperfectly, surmounts it.None of the works address the recent bombardments directly, although the precarious context of ongoing threat, instability and struggle can be felt in almost all of them.

Ducking into Maryam Lashkari, Hodjat Salimi and Oscar Tuazon’s interactive sculpture — an enormous cardboard tube lying on its side — feels like entering a culvert or a bomb shelter.Inside, one lies on a crude bed of felt blankets and dons a set of headphones; the sounds of jet planes, a party, conversations and emergency sirens are interspersed with an imperious voice reading a guided meditation on how to be present in one’s body during a bombing.

The harsh realities of war are woven into the textures of everyday life, warping and fraying into something absurd.Viewers may scan a QR code for their own copy of the audio track, which deteriorates in sound quality with every download.Symbols of neglect and urban decay abound in artist Sayre Gomez’s “Precious Moments” at David Kordansky Galle...