Statement:

In the Mermaid series, I challenge the traditional duality of mind and body by centring the body as a source of truth, experience, and presence.

This series explores the figure not as a container for consciousness, but as consciousness itself--fluid, complex, and inseparable from the world around it. The human form here is not symbolic of something else; it is real, physical, and primary.

Painting allows me to move between figuration and abstraction, collapsing binaries and creating a space where flesh and form can coexist with movement, rhythm, and emotion.///

The figures in Mermaid are fragmented and intertwined, immersed in watery, organic environments that mirror their fluidity. They are not isolated beings--they are part of nature, shaped by it, and shaping it in return.

Water, as a recurring element, speaks to this merging. It blurs boundaries, dissolves edges, and reflects the instability of fixed identities.

The body in my work is not static or idealized. It sweats, flows, transforms, and interacts with the world around it. Through this, I aim to break away from the abstraction of the body into idea or metaphor, and instead insist on its raw presence--its force, its reality, its vitality.

Mermaid is ultimately a refusal of separation: between mind and body, human and nature, figure and ground. It is a visual terrain where bodies exist entirely--erotic, expressive, collective, and alive.

"Farrokh"