Statement:

Dastan's Basement is happy to announce the opening of "Folded In", Kolsum Salehi's solo painting exhibition, starting Friday, August 8, 2025. The show will be on view through Friday, August 29.

This is the artist's 2nd solo exhibition at Dastan's Basement following "The Library of Babel" (2021). Works of Salehi have appeared in several group shows held by Dastan.

To Kolsum Salehi, "Folded In" speaks in a visual language more akin to a "whisper". It is the language of "collective silence, of those who have been forgotten."

The human portraits and trees drawn with pencil and monotype using papier-mâché are thus shadows of what they represent and they point to an absence. They reveal residues of a body, a memory, a connection.

The boundary separating the human body and the world of nature is no longer visible. The dark, scratched surfaces, blots, shadows, and half completed forms are remains of an unconsumated narrative. Every scratch is like a trace of time, a layer on the body of the image.