How Do I Look

How Do I Look? is a series of paintings that explores identity as something fluid, fragmented, and continually shaped through memory, displacement, and lived experience. Through portraits and figurative compositions, the work examines the tension between visibility and concealment, intimacy and distance, and the shifting relationship between self-perception and the gaze of others.
As an Iranian artist based in Toronto, my practice is deeply informed by personal and cultural transition. Immigration has created a space of ongoing negotiation between past and present selves, where vulnerability and transformation coexist. This series reflects that condition through layered surfaces and repeated imagery of faces and eyes, suggesting both fragmentation and persistent presence.
Working with paint, thread, and collage elements such as fabric and paper, I build compositions through accumulation and repair. These materials carry both formal and conceptual weight, referencing care, labor, and the act of piecing together experience. Even in more ambiguous or crowded compositions, the presence of figures remains central, often implied through fragmented forms and multiple viewpoints.
How Do I Look? becomes a space for self-exploration, where painting functions as both a reflective and transformative process. The works hold moments of tension and uncertainty, but also attempts at connection — between inner states, external perception, and the evolving sense of self.