She thinks of self portraits as a sort of personal diary in which she can pour her inner feelings and thoughts on life.īagheri agrees that self portraits can serve as private vignettes of an artist, at complete risk of disclosure to the public, but it is a language she has chosen to communicate with. She further explained that the emotional expressions in her portraits are influenced by the obstacles she encounters as a woman. “I started self-exploration five years ago and questioned things like: Who am I? What is the real me among all the different characters I play everyday? Am I influenced by my family, the society or past? How do external events affect my attitude toward others and myself?” The most challenging aspect of self portraits, she explained, was avoiding repetition and the ability to represent emotions continually in different forms. Bagheri was drawn to creating self portraits due to her fascination with the different shades of human nature. She often accomplishes this by creating her own space of time and reality reflective in the ideas of her work. Soodeh Bagheri is an illustrator, photographer and painter for whom the process of painting is a form of finding and recognizing what has passed within her inner self. To me, discovering a new communication with the inner layers of self is attractive, and this kind of discovery connects me with ephemeral moments of the present time,” said Barzi. “My motive today to do portraits is quite different. The mood of her collection was contemplative, reflective and broody. At this exhibition, she presented a carbon-pencil sketched collection of self portraits that was produced between 1985-1995. After the war, she started experimenting with white canvases and light-colored panels, which bordered more on simplicity in aesthetic value. During the Iran-Iraq war, when galleries were not very active, she found herself indulging in color-pencil landscape paintings. Shahla Hosseini Barzi, who has evolved and matured as an artist over the years, initially started with oil paintings and portraits of women who modeled for her. The message of existentialism, of being a woman with all the complexities, fears and beauties is the message she expresses best through her work. Tami says that she enjoys that process of expressing the most intimate feelings and this is why she indulges in the process of creating self portraits. The emotions usually expressed through self-portraits can reveal the intellectual and emotional state of the artist, which can be sourced from feelings of fear, bravery or a sense of loneliness. If the natural act of breathing becomes difficult it can be because of certain circumstances in the social and mental life of an artist or even the geographical conditions where the artwork is created,” she said. She denied that the use of red, green and white colors that subtly hinted at a veil over the face in one of her portraits was a deliberate reference to the colors of the Iranian national flag. Her collection of portraits at the exhibition was dominated with depictions of an elongated face and poignant, reflective features. Shideh Tami, a poet, sculptor and painter uses humans as her only subject, both in her paintings and sculptures.
Her future plans are to “work and leave my imagination to go further.” Physical manifestation is the least important to me,” she said.
“I have painted myself so many times using a mirror, but for this exhibition, I have painted from my imagination. The process of capturing and demonstrating emotions in her self portraits is a combination of recollections from the past and the present state of mind. She said the reason behind indulging in self portraits is driven by the need to explore the inner self. It is a process between what you are and what you want to be,” said Hamedi. The most difficult part is to see your real self, not your preferred image, which may be more beautiful, stronger and more glorious.
“We have different thoughts and feelings. The use of a merry color palette created a soft, feminine and defined collection of portraits. The exhibition, “Self Portraits and Portraits,” was a true, raw and inspiring entry into the private, intimate recesses of these women’s minds and emotions.Īhoo Hamedi who uses the hand, body, or sometimes, the face as the subject of her portraits, employed various brush techniques and mixed media to add vulnerability to her paintings.
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