Fatemeh Takht Keshian is originally from Iran. She holds a practice-based PhD in Art from Lancaster University, and a BA and a MA in Painting from Iran. Her practice combines drawing, painting collage and video to articulate her identity and perceptions as an Iranian woman.

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Her current project includes drawing into re-cycled second-hand books. These texts, fiPlled as they are with their previous owners’ dreams and ideas, are overlaid with her dreams, nightmares and life experiences. She aims to show their real faces and how they describe their identity, reflecting on them with the mirror of her own artworks.

 

In the larger paintings old photos, symbols and traditional motifs are combined to make layered portraits of identity. The pieces in this series complete each other, like different sides of the same form. The faces, depicted in different situations, manifest the truth behind her portraits, trying to hide behind forms and colours. However, hiding it seems to be impossible, even by omitting the portrait and substituting it with an empty shape.

 

Images and visual elements are woven together. Sketch books combine with films and pictures recorded in Iran and Britain, these images, elements, pictures and films lay over each other as semi-transparent layers. They collectively perform a circle: they walk and flow inside or outside of one another, cover or uncover and appear or disappear within each other. They are a mixture of different themes, dreams and imaginary places and states which have elements of secrecy and disclosure. This series of works evoke the conflict among the different layers of her identity.

 

www.fatemehtakhtkeshian.wordpress.com

https://lancaster.academia.edu/fatemehtakhtkeshian

Contact: takhtkeshian.fatemeh@gmail.com