Shohreh Mehran’s masked paintings from the series Effaced presented at Etemad Dubai, are substantial body of anonymous portraits that the artist has produced over the last three years. These painting are based on studies on the paradoxical gesture of resistance and defiance. They are permanent records of the ‘faceless’ individuals who are on the wrong side of the law. We have become accustomed to seeing these images repeatedly in the media, when criminal offenses take place and the culture of sensationalization that surrounds such imagery i.e. the manners in which they are represent crime and its subsequent punishment. “I am submitting four recent paintings for your consideration. Like all my other paintings, they are done in oil and depict scenes of urban life in Tehran. My working method is as follows: I shoot several photographs of a scene that has intrigued me (streets, street signs, buildings, or in the case of the works I’m submitting here, college students.) Some of these photographs are “documentary” and others are “staged” by me. I then manipulate these images in Photoshop (ie. change the colors, the backgrounds, the composition of the image, etc.) and paint the resulting image on canvas. I often go back to the original image halfway through the painting process and rework it based on the insights I’ve had while painting”. Born in Iran in 1958, Shohreh Mehran is a painter and a graphic designer who graduated with a degree in Graphic Arts from the Tehran College of Arts. Often communicating by absence rather than presence, Mehran’s images capture and distil contemporary Iranian scenes and people, particularly in the urban and social context of Tehran. She has exhibited widely in Iran and her works have been shown in Middle Eastern region and internationally, including Sharjah Biennial 10 – Iran Today – Brigitte Schenk Gallery, Koln – Artspace, London – Signature Gallery – Munster – AlSerkal , Dubai and at The United Nations in New York.
