ELAHE HEIDARI

The “Still”s
28 September -19 October, 2018

Assar Art Gallery presents The “Still”s, the latest series of works by Elahe Heidari.

In her second exhibition with the gallery, the artist showcases eight oil paintings she has created
over the past three years. Still avoiding storytelling and leaving it up to the audiences to read
their stories through her pictures, Elahe breaks away from talking - the standard means of
expression - and portrays the world around her with her mouthless figures.

After her 2009 Chairs series in which tables and empty chairs were pictured and her 2015
Around Objects series in which female figures discretely occupied the chairs along with the
objects around them, this time the artist illustrates her concerns and feelings through her
mouthless seated female figures. Unlike Around Objects, however, the women are fully painted
and they have found a more realistic appeal.

Although only women are present in Elahe’s paintings, no particular gender issue is proposed.
“I paint the people with whom I hang out more and even if I painted men, they, too, would be
mouthless as talking is what I have problems with.” And being “mouthless” or a “woman” are
not the only features of her work that do not have any contextual significance. Essentially, none
of the outward characteristics of her work stands for a symbolic connotation. The loneliness of
her figures, for example, comes from her own lifestyle and she doesn’t intend to put an
emphasis on “solitude” as a concept. Elahe Heidari’s paintings mirror her life.

Experiencing through the process of creation, the artist portrays the change she is conceptually
and technically going through. Rough textures - reckoned as Elahe’s signature - are moderated
in The Stills series, and figures have become more discernable and representational. Like her
themes and personal experiences, her palette, too, is a continuation of Around Objects with
added purples.

Elahe Heidari was born in 1968 in Iran. She has had many solo exhibitions in Tehran since
1997 and taken part in several International group shows. She has also had residencies at Cité
Internationale des Arts, Paris, and selected as best artist in the Fourth Isfahan Painting
Biennale as well as in Dr. Soundozi’s Drawing Festival at the Imam Ali Museum in Tehran.