Shahla Hosseini is a senior figure in contemporary Iranian art known for her sensitive material approach. Understated tonal changes in whites take place across the surfaces of her Untitled 2023 canvases, infusing colour into the geometrically reduced compositions. Delicate material shifts are apparent through frayed fabrics and cracking plaster. This emphasises the limited lifespan of the materials and, in doing so, implies the mortality of all life forms.

Arcs span the lengths and widths of the Untitled canvases, radiating towards and away from one another. As fragments of much larger circles, these images suggest limitless spaces far beyond the borders of the canvas. Circles make for evocative analogies: moons orbiting ancient planets, or cells dividing to create new life. However, the artist describes the tension of the arcs pushing and pulling against the negative space in her works as similar to remembering the presence, and yet noticing the absence, of departed kin. Hosseini proposes the arcs are the last image her father saw before he passed – the long arcs tracing the thin slits of his eyelids closing one last time. Hosseini’s own eyes have witnessed death on a personal, national and global scale. Despite this loss, by continuing to look and create, Hosseini chooses to affirm life.