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maryam hoseini
About the Artist
Maryam Hoseini (b. 1988, Tehran, Iran) is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in New York. Known for her fragmented, abstract figures, Hoseini draws inspiration from mass media, including horror movies, Surrealism – particularly the works of Salvador Dalí – and her childhood experiences growing up in Iran. She obtained a bachelor’s degree in graphic design at Soore Art University, Tehran, in 2012 and MFAs from Bard College, New York, and the School of Art Institute of Chicago. She has shown in high-profile exhibitions at the Green Art Gallery, Dubai (2020); the Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York (2020); and MoMA PS1, New York (2018).
Lessons with a female art teacher in Iran made Hoseini think creatively about art making, empowering her to pursue an artistic career. She is a member of Endjavi-Barbé Art Projects, a collective established in 2011 that aims to promote the visibility of emerging contemporary Iranian artists globally.
Hoseini’s work oscillates between humour and fear, suggesting concepts of identity politics. Her early practice focused on the features of the human face. In recent works, however, a shift has occurred: the artist has started to cut the heads off her flattened figures.
She considers herself primarily as a draughtsperson: a label that refers not only to the medium through which she originally came to art as a teenager, but also to the way in which she approaches her work, often applying details, such as body hair for instance, with pencil on top of layers of paint. She is also interested in broadening the scope of the scene she is depicting beyond the bounds of the canvas and onto the wall behind it.
Maryam Hoseini. Courtesy the artist
WORKS IN THE COLLECTION
Maryam Hoseini, "Liars in the Kitchen", 2019
Acrylic, ink and pencil on paper
60.9 x 45.7 cm unframed; 68.3 x 52.7 cm framed
Image courtesy of the artist and Rachel Uffner Gallery.
Photo by Stan Narten.
Liars in the Kitchen (2019), with its dystopian scene playing out in the heart of the home, questions the social expectations faced by women, perhaps even more so in the Middle East. Hoseini’s fragmented body parts seem to have crumbled under or been cut by the utensils that surround them. The kitchen is a contested room for women’s emancipation, recalling the work of American feminist Martha Rosler, whose famous video – Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975) – is a resonant critique of traditional women’s roles in a context of domestic consumerism.
Hoseini’s work inquires into the reality of expectations of perfection and the effects this can have on both a personal and collective level. Using disembodied limbs to suggest the experience of a human as an incomplete being, the artist examines the concept of being itself as something to be challenged and in constant evolution. She encourages the viewer to consider their own ‘false dichotomies’, thereby promoting multilateral and nuanced schools of thought.