Mahshid Modares

Mahshid Modares is a mixed media artist. Her three major series, Black Reality, Gabeh and Termeh, are the artist’s journey to comprehend her heritage and roots as an Iranian woman artist. In her paintings, the artist reminds the viewer of the splendor and excellence of Iranian traditional arts, often mislabeled as handcraft. She invites her audience to see Iranian indigenous art thoroughly and admire the generations of artists in many different fields of art, all of whom share a keen understanding of form, color, coordination, and mathematics behind the geometrical and arabesque patterns. With her compositions, Mahshid intends to communicate the same sense of harmony and rhythm that can be found in traditional Iranian art. She believes in Art as an international visual dialogue that should embrace characteristics of the artist and the culture he or she grew up in; in her works Mahshid is looking for her roots as an Iranian individual.

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Termeh Series

Dedicated to all Iranian Women and my mother, Ozra Mehrpasand, who taught me embroidery.

My 2006-2008 project is a series of ten canvases named Termeh no. 1, Termeh no. 2 and so on, which are a combination of acrylic painting and embroidery.

Termeh is a woven cloth completely handmade that originated in Iran. The intricate patterns on the cloth are usually the result of pure silk, real gold and silver fibers.

The purpose of creating this series is to scrutinize the patterns, colors, coordination, and composition of Iranian textiles such as Termeh and Persian carpet that are examples of Iranian sublime art and that has been basically products made by women for centuries.

Through this experience, I tend to appreciate the excellent works of arts created by unknown women artists, as well as to expose a path in which I can translate the language of traditional textile design into the modern visual language.

These ten paintings become more complex, as Termeh no. 1 is the simplest one and Termeh no. 10 will reach the complexity of Persian carpet and Termeh.