Statement:

Mohammad Abbasi’s art practice is a conversation about transformation and landscape, pertaining both to the idea of Home and of Self. As an immigrant, his work seeks to navigate ‘The Third Space’ as experienced by diasporic populations, and negotiate what are the boundaries? What is ‘safe’?

Reflecting on his biographical influences Abbasi writes:

“When I think about my childhood and adolescence, several memories come to mind: moving between multiple rental houses, my mother's village and its stunning and mountainous geography, fearing God's punishment, making hidden houses between quilts.///

Finding myself in a new country, far removed from home, necessitates a multi-dimensional transformation. The immigrant must navigate through their own cultural narrative while simultaneously deciphering mysteries of their new environment. I arrived in Edmonton from my home in Iran two years ago. It's not easy for me to write the story of my life, and part of what you're seeing in my artworks is a shadow of the things I can't talk about directly and so they become hidden layers in my artworks.

The complex interplay of political and religious factors throughout the Middle East create a burden of self-censorship for me as an artist, particularly within my homeland of Iran.

The paintings I made before coming to Canada reflect this reality, presenting empty boats tossed on stormy seas and anxious images of travels ahead. In the new collection of my paintings titled “the home” the central theme has transformed from sea to land, from passage to arrival. Cubic and geometric shapes emerge from speculative tableaus that traverse liminal boundaries between landscape and abstraction.

By simplifying elements such as the structure of a home and boat, I’ve found a way to express the essential without revealing a specific inner narrative.”