Reality is terrifying and recounting it, stripped of metaphor or allegory, is even more so. To grasp and re-present reality has always been placed within the realm of social and dissenting art, for reality itself is dreadful, even when the artist bears no intention of exposing its severity.
In her earlier works, Mahsa Shamsian often approached reality with irony and symbolism. Yet in the forthcoming exhibition, she arrives at a bare retelling untainted, unembellished which renders it all the more unsettling. Silent figures in a silent city, “where there may be movement, but nothing stirs.” This unvarnished retelling becomes the starting point of interpretation in her work, where each viewer may either remain a witness or imagine themselves within the bodies framed on the canvas.
— Saeed Babavand
