Maryam Abedi’s work proceeds from various experiences of setting things side by side: arrays of canvas pieces; the tradition of figurative and abstract painting; “feminine: and “masculine” artistic conventions; painting, sculpture, and installation art; and collage and assemblage.
Her personal style preserves and cherishes traditional achievements of painting, rendering them with reverent care and insight. Her allusion to the act of painting is also evident in her coloring technique: She supplements an abstract structure with textures and brush strokes of traditional figurative oil painting, thus bringing together painterly and minimal attitudes.
The boundaries between categories of artistic conventions are blurred and discarded as a new approach emerges which is simultaneously modest and assertive. It evokes patchworks and carpet making on the one hand, and Baroque tones and hues on the other, thereby conjuring up humble needlework and grand historical art at the same time. All these can be placed together and produce novel patterns and significances by means of a method that seeks to provide ample opportunities to continue the ancient painting tradition through a reunion with another age-old tradition: carpet-making and its full internal vigor.
"My works has their roots in the history of painting. The process behind my paintings is important for me. This process focuses on different subject matters within painting, such as the idea of canvas as a support material. The result is minimal paintings with horizontal and vertical lines. These lines have been created by folded canvas strips that have been weaved together. The idea of my technique comes from two different sources; first one the fact that I beside my artistic practice, work as a cloth designer and also making clothes and second, from the tradition of carpet making which I have a close relation to and also has a deep root in my home country Iran."
Born in 1986, Maryam Abedi grew up in Tehran, Iran. She initially studied Graphic Design at University of Tehran (2005-2010), turning to painting when she lived in New York for two years and studied at New York Academy of Art (2011-2013). She also Studied Museum Studies at Tehran University of Art (2016-2019). She attended the Pilotenkueche International Art residency program in Leipzig, Germany (2018). Her first solo exhibition was at Iranian Artist Forum in 2016, and her following exhibitions have included the 2017 piecing together and 2019 String Course, Iranshahr gallery, and 2022 If Like the Lord I had Control Over the Firmament, Assar Gallery (Iran).
Abedi now lives and works in Tehran, Iran where the people and place of her home are the foundation of her work.