Statement:

Atefeh Ahmadi has written, “Rahmanian seeks new points of connection, between things, ideas, senses, between herself and the world.”

She notes that Rahmanian’s visual language is rooted in the literary and visual culture of Iran. Ahmadi suggests that “Rahmanian paints in the semiotics of Persian poetry,” materializing “the language’s spectral and elusive sensibility with her painterly “figures of speech.”///

Her work vibrates with the light-heartedness and playful spirit found in the meditations of the Persian poet and astronomer, Khayyam, on the cyclic dance of nothingness and being, personified in her work as the shape of the circle.

She also engages with more literal forms of personification, drawn from proverbs and the witty humor characteristic of the Persian satirical literary tradition. In this way, her canvases challenge and expand the possibilities of living in one’s own language as a migrant.

Rahmanian begins with moments of everyday life, teeth marks on an apple, bent through memory, and resulting in what Ahmadi calls a “fleshy, moist optics.” For her, this “act of remembering is inseparable from the act of painting: its materiality, and its extension to the thickly material world.”