The Fruit of Debt 

Afrang Nordlöf Malekian

24.09 – 18.10.2026

 

Autumn arrives and the pomegranate ripens. Persephone descends into the underworld to Hades, and the harvest season draws to a close. In The Fruit of Debt, Afrang Nordlöf Malekian presents an installation in which the pomegranate weaves together stories of myth, gifts and debt.

 

For the exhibition at Cowgirl Gallery, Nordlöf Malekian has created new, site-specific works. Three brass sculptures in the form of jewellery trees rise from mounds of soil. Necklaces hang from their branches, falling towards the ground. One of them bears a gilded pomegranate. The starting point is a golden pomegranate necklace that the artist’s grandmother smuggled out of Iran in her bra as a wedding gift for Nordlöf Malekian’s mother. It had a stunning appearance, yet beneath its beauty grew a violent childhood home. The pomegranate is also the fruit that, in Greek mythology, bound Persephone to the underworld. The installation weaves myth and family history together through an exploration of the pomegranate as a gift, which in many stories deceive the receiver.

 

Each jewellery tree speaks to a different stage in a seasonal cycle, relating to the pomegranate as a symbol of life, death, and rebirth. In Anything Dead Coming Back to Life Hurts, from Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1987), the chains form only a fringe on one branch and buds on the other. In The Wind Ripens they have grown into full necklaces. Lastly, the jewellery tree with the ripened fruit, The Golden Pomegranate Falls, refers to Persephone’s descent to the underworld and the artist’s personal history.

 

Alongside the sculptures, a sound installation echoes through the gallery. The composition is inspired by Iannis Xenakis’s percussion piece Persephassa (1969), whose title is an ancient form of Persephone’s name. Its metallic strikes and rattling textures recall the sound of jewellery touching jewellery. As the sounds move around Nordlöf Malekian’s jewellery trees, they connect the composition to the necklaces and the gilded pomegranate they bear.

 

Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001) was a Greek avant-garde composer, architect and engineer who brought mathematics, music and architecture together and treated space itself as part of his compositions. Xenakis’s interest in spatial sound shaped Persephassa, a work for six percussionists positioned around the audience. The work was commissioned for the Shiraz–Persepolis Festival of Arts and premiered at Persepolis in Iran in 1969. The festival brought together Iranian and international artists across music, theatre, dance and film. It was held annually until 1978, when it came to an end amid the Iranian Revolution. In the basement of Cowgirl Gallery, Xenakis’s composition and Nordlöf Malekian’s work come together through the myth of Persephone, evoking the sound of the underworld.

 

Afrang Nordlöf Malekian (b. 1995) is an Iranian-Swedish artist based in Berlin. Through installation, performance and storytelling, he explores how cultures of exile change and become hybridised in everyday life. His practice draws on mythology, archives and personal memories to listen closely to history’s silent actors, tracing how their stories and dreams can transform traditional modes of thought. 

 

Nordlöf Malekian holds an MFA from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm (2020–2024). His work was recently exhibited at Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2025), and is represented in the collections of Moderna Museet, Public Art Agency Sweden and the Arab Image Foundation Library.

 

Curated by Selma Modéer Wiking

Sound installation by Cowgirl Gallery and Ren Azuma

 

Cowgirl Gallery

Karlshamnsgatan 4, Malmö