Mahsa Tehrani

Mahsa Tehrani (b. 1983, Tehran, Iran) has a BSc in Industrial Engineering and is a self-taught painter. She has won the Fajr Visual Arts Festival award in 2018 and the Shahr Visual Arts Festival in the Pardis Mellat Gallery in 2019.


This work is a part of the world created in my mind: it never has been and never will be. Thinking about social and political instability has been the starting point of this world. Moreover, it has been shaped by considering an unclear and idealized image that we have from the past, which is thoroughly different from the experience of an individual in my generation, and is full of unusual occurrences with an uncertain future. Thus, I have been seeking to create a world of contrasts and contradictions; a world on the border of balance and chaos, harmony and destruction, pleasure and disgust. I have regarded representation as the mediator between the viewer and his lifeworld. Imagination, thinking outside the box, simplicity, complexity, and disregarding conventional expectations, have been my tools. In this way, I seek to trigger more complex reactions in the audience that are marked by chaos and calm. As the consequence of the emotional reaction of the viewer that can be a mixture of rejection and desire, confusion and peace, I deliberately disregard conventional expectations of form and content: a vague and mysterious situation at the intersection of life and death, the familiar and the unfamiliar.

Mahsa Tehrani, “Immigrant flamingos Returned After Two Years”, oil on canvas, 140 x 200 cm, 2019