Neither Here ~ Nor Elsewhere, 2024 | Third Line Gallery, Dubai
Found 3 Mirrors in the Deepest Vale Between Two Hills, If You Let Me Grow, I Will Bring All the Mirrors For You...
This installation combines a large-scale photographic image with a medium-sized, materially dense oil painting, staged in direct confrontation. The photograph, taken in a studio setting, depicts my own hand with elongated red nails, occupying the frame with a heightened sense of surface, control, and display.In contrast, the painting introduces a different register: a textured, tactile body rendered through layers of oil, with silicone applied along its edges. The silicone inscription, spelling the title of the work, functions both as a boundary and an extension, blurring the distinction between surface, skin, and language.The disproportion between the enlarged photographic hand and the painted body produces a tension between scale, authority, and vulnerability. The hand hovers as a force of framing, control, or potential violence, while the painted figure remains contained, exposed, and materially unstable.Presented at The Third Line in Dubai within an exhibition focused on marginalized bodies and queer subjectivities, the work reflects on how bodies are positioned within systems of visibility, held, measured, or reduced, while simultaneously resisting full legibility.
Armory Art Fair, September 2025 | Dastan Gallery, New York
At the Armory Show 2025, Dastan presents works by Nicky Nodjoumi, Pooya Aryanpour , Iman Raad , and Mahsa Merci. The presentation reflects on repetition and the lingering unease that arises from cycles of return and recurrence.
Mahsa Merci engages with portraiture through dense, impasto-like oil touches, where repetition lies in the very technique of layering paint. Her figures emerge with a deliberately uneven surface, their skin marked by an unsettling texture that resists smoothness. Often depicted in makeup or drag, they seem to move beyond conventional ideals of beauty, evoking instead a charged atmosphere'.
La Chambre Blanche, 2026 | Quebec, Canada
Az Tan Be Tan (From Body to Body)
This installation was developed during my residency at La Chambre Blanche in Quebec (2026). It brings together a group of works including 3D-printed hair forms, hair imagery engraved on 6 black stones,photographs of my hand, MDF sculptures of an eye and an eyebrow, and a black ankle boot with eyelashes individually attached to its surface, arranged across a large, low pedestal.The elements are distributed across the surface as a field of fragments: isolated hands, partial body forms, repeated structures, and inverted elements. Certain forms appear displaced or reoriented, turned upside down or removed from their expected position,shifting their relationship to the body and to one another.The installation reflects on the objectification of the body and the gradual fragmentation of the self under sustained exposure to systems of power. Rather than presenting the body as a unified form, it appears divided, displaced, and redistributed across the space.The relationship between the elements suggests an ongoing negotiation between control and submission, visibility and erasure. What emerges is not a stable subject, but a condition shaped through repetition, pressure, and structural influence.
Something Is Missing, 2025 | Toronto, Ontario
This image shows an installation view of my solo exhibition Something is Missing, presented in Toronto at Dupant Rail in 2025.The exhibition developed through two years of experimental work and emerged from an ongoing attempt to define a stable sense of self, an attempt that gradually shifted into the realization that identity is neither fixed nor easily named. Instead, it remains fluid, shaped by layers that are not fully accessible, operating in relation to the unconscious.Working across sculpture, painting, drawing, photography, text, and installation, the exhibition brings together materials such as soap, metal, silicone, sand, and hair. These elements appear in states of partial formation, resisting clear definition and remaining open to interpretation.Like waking from a dream and struggling to interpret it, the work approaches meaning through ambiguity rather than resolution. This show embraces uncertainty and the act of questioning, suggesting that not knowing is in fact the answer.
Wet Light in Midnight, 2025 | Wolf Hill, New York
This image shows an installation view of my solo exhibition Something is Missing, presented in Toronto at Dupant Rail in 2025.The exhibition developed through two years of experimental work and emerged from an ongoing attempt to define a stable sense of self, an attempt that gradually shifted into the realization that identity is neither fixed nor easily named. Instead, it remains fluid, shaped by layers that are not fully accessible, operating in relation to the unconscious.Working across sculpture, painting, drawing, photography, text, and installation, the exhibition brings together materials such as soap, metal, silicone, sand, and hair. These elements appear in states of partial formation, resisting clear definition and remaining open to interpretation.Like waking from a dream and struggling to interpret it, the work approaches meaning through ambiguity rather than resolution. This show embraces uncertainty and the act of questioning, suggesting that not knowing is in fact the answer.
Art Toronto, 2024 | Zaal Gallery x Dastan Gallery, Toronto, Canada
