A Conversation with Maryam Abedi
Iranshahr Gallery
Feb. 2019
- How does your education and work experience inform the development of your artistic endeavors?
My background goes back to my college-level education in graphics design in the University of Tehran. Later, I moved to New York City and studied painting in the New York Academy of Art. The significant point in my training there was that the way I viewed my life and the world totally transformed. I learned that teaching painting is teaching to view in a painterly manner. When I returned to Iran, I was in a state of despondency as if I wanted to find myself, to see myself in a new way. I put painting aside for two years and, during that time, I started to weave carpets and to design tailored clothing. After two years, an entirely new look had substituted my previous way of looking at the world. At that point, the desire to paint was born again inside this new version of me.
Regarding this matter, Steven Assael, one of my mentors, had the most influence on me. By attending in several of his workshops, I learned how to live and look in a painterly manner. Steven used only living model to create his works. This choice of his would lead to spending long hours and numerous sessions with the model, talking to and living with him/her like a friend. Observing his attitude towards the model and the process of creating a painting made me grow in patience as well. The result is my current experiences which need hours of concentration in the process of implementing the artwork. Steven also applied paint to the canvas in his own specific way which he called sculpturing the painting. He not only gave me the courage to use tools in my own specific way, but also transformed the way I looked at painting to the extent that I interpreted the idea of sculpturing the painting in my own way and gave a form to this idea in my abstract works with the painting canvas.
- So the transformation of your way of painting from figurative to your current works started at this juncture. Beginning from figurative drawing and painting, how did you achieve your current technique?
I used to stretch the fabric on my canvas myself which led to feeling that I am developing a special kind of relationship to this material. Moreover, cutting while designing and sewing clothes had become an everyday habit for me, part of my unconscious. I had been weaving carpet for a while as well. Warp, weft, knot and texture had become an essential part of my mental context. Ultimately, these two (cutting the fabric and weaving) came together and formed my working style. I did not start with prior planning or a specific intent. Everything occurred in the course of working. It was a new experience and my progress led to more and deeper questions for me. At first, I started with minimal works using strips cut from canvas fabric and arranging them in separate horizontal and vertical lines inspired by warp and weft. I became interested in this process. I did not know whether these works were sculpture or painting, or both, or something in between! However, after the first few experiences, I merged warps and wefts and achieved texture. Now I would weave the strips and give form to the tableaus. In the meantime, I applied some changes to the size of the strips and, through this, I could generate geometry which led to developing new forms. This process in its totality was a kind of exploration and inquiry. I myself was curious to see what would happen in the next phase.
- So the work becomes autonomous…
I usually feel that I learn from the artwork I’m making much more than me being instrumental in its completion. Sometimes I see a form like a cosmologic seed taking shape in the tableau. What is the meaning of this seed? Is it the first or the last? Ideas like that of the seed as the prime of a tree and also as its maturation… Such thoughts come to my mind. When an unplanned form or unintended geometry is created in the tableau, it makes my soul evolve and helps me grasp the world in which I’m drifting. I don’t want to make a concept beforehand. The concept is produced in the artwork, teaches me, and I act parallel to it as an instrument.
- Didn’t you expect the formation of arches?
I don’t have any expectation. Even if I sketch and study beforehand, what occurs in the process of implementing the artwork will be different from my studies. That doesn’t mean that I am unable to implement my studies of the work, which is totally possible. The point is when I sketch and study and then start to work I realize something different is taking place, and I become interested in experiencing that. I think there is always time to implement previously-done sketches and studies. I am much more interested in seeing what happens in the course of working, and it is thus that I only go along with the formation of the artwork. It happens gradually, not all of a sudden. Academic training is very helpful in its creation, but, while I assist the forms to take shape, those forms assist me as well. I learn from them and I challenge my learnings to find out where I can use them.
Moreover, in the course of working, things happen which point the way to other incidents. In the heart of this series other works have taken shape that can be the onset of installation and space-oriented works. They might disassociate entirely from painting and find their way to the field of sculpture and installation art. Yet I still believe that I achieved them through painting.
- What changes have occurred between your first exhibition in the Iranshahr Gallery and your current one there?
At that time, what was important to me was experimenting with figurative and abstract forms and the way these two relate to each other. So, as the title of the exhibition (“Juxtaposition”) suggested, minimal, figurative and woven texture were juxtaposed in it. After that, experimenting with woven texture gained considerable significance in my eye. I continued working with that and it led to the current exhibition in which the nature of woven texture and the geometry it generated became much more pronounced.
- What about color?
Regarding color, I apply paint to the work in two ways: directly and indirectly. In the first, I prepare the strips, arrange the layout of the work and then apply paint. In the other, I apply paint to the strips first – while they are on the ground – and then arrange the layout of the work. Actually, the second way is under the influence of my recent residency in Leipzig where I saw the styles of German works and their methods of being implemented. The specific figurative style of Leipzig’s works and their expressive coloring had a great impression on me. In Leipzig, by applying paint to the strips on the ground, I made the work more expressive.
- And the material of the canvas plays the main role…
Currently, yes. The process of weaving and juxtaposing the strips goes forward very slowly. Consequently the pallet of color used includes light colors, as if the color is the sound of silence behind the material. My emphasis on material makes painting get close to the field of sculpture, yet implementing the work on the ground, which heavily involves my body, makes this process get close to the field of performance. The effects of this physical involvement particularly dawns on me after the work is finished, when I become unable to work anymore because of fatigue and am forced to get away from work for some time in order to revive.
- There are other artists who work in a similar manner. What do you think of their works?
Up to now, I have encountered two other artist who use the canvas material in a similar manner: one American, the other European. The layout of fabric strips in the works of these two artists is such that the strips are put over each other. Yet, in my way of working, the strips are put beside each other so that the possibility of weaving is born and becomes available to me. Also, their method of applying paint prioritizes paint. Furthermore, the American artist uses bleach in order to whiten the canvas fabric. What he does calls to mind a minimalistic feel which suggests minimal use of the painting material. My own work might also seem minimalistic in the end, but it is not driven by minimalistic concerns.
- And your focus is on weaving.
Weaving has become very important in my recent work. I am constantly thinking of warp and weft, how to show them, how to expand the possibilities of using the canvas as material. Yet the other two artists use this material in a way that restricts it.
- In essence, what distinguishes and contextualizes your works is both the influence of the geography in which you live and your experience in carpet-weaving.
I think what flashes in the mind of a person who lives in a particular geography might also flash in another person’s mind in a different geography. There is no distinction regarding this. Some people might ignore what comes to their mind, while others make it the main concern of their work. We might say that this practice became the main concern of my work due to geographic influences and my experiences in carpet-weaving.
- What inspires you most?
Mostly silence and concentration, yet what I take from people, nature, architecture, or a dialogue is also important to me. In fact, the philosophy of my life and that of my work are not separable. The prolonged course of working and focusing on the process has become a sort of meditation for me. Perhaps the forms inspired by nature and architecture come out of this meditation.
Translated by Parisa Hakim Javadi