One of six new films from Art21’s fall 2019 programming

How does a painter translate the real into the abstract? From their Brooklyn studio, Maryam Hoseini explores the spaces in between painting and drawing, figuration and abstraction, and the personal experiences embedded in their work and the multiple interpretations viewers can bring to it. As they flip through pencil drawings and resume work on an acrylic painting, the artist recounts their early interest in drawing classes and the strong, female art teacher in their native Iran that inspired them. Hoseini’s current work depicts fragmented—often female—bodies floating in abstract, flattened architectural spaces, in suggestive, but open-ended narratives.

With their work shown at major exhibitions around the world, Hoseini explains the concept behind their recently commissioned series of paintings for an exhibition coinciding with the 58th Venice Biennale. A reimagining of the famous 12th-century poem about Laylah and Majnun, Hoseini’s paintings focus on the female character in the legend, a woman who, as the artist puts it, “was banned from speaking and desiring what she really wanted.”

This sense of fear and anxiety, punctuated with strength and humor, pervades Hoesini’s work. The artist tracks the evolution of their style, coming to the conclusion that their choice to depict fragmented, headless bodies and fractured, illegible spaces reflects their “own personal experiences and life as an immigrant and as a person who is not even able to travel to my country and to return to my work and life here in America.”