Fire Trial: Sepide Rahaa Solo Exhibition

Being an artist gives me an ability to think deeply about life and the things that matter in it. It makes me committed to be responsible about everything I do in my life and about other people. I think art challenges many different concepts of ordinary life and is somewhere in a border area between societies and countries. Art is a sort of knowledge I can get to improve my understanding of life. For me, working as an artist is to challenge every issue related to people and their social life. Every thought, sensation and change in life makes me start drawing. It is like putting myself in a certain situation, and then trying to portray it.

On the other hand, I cannot extricate human beings from an artwork. It is the core of any artwork which encompasses everything inside. What matters to me is that art cannot be separated from politics. Even if I choose a very simple subject, it still cannot be separated, so from this point of view every piece of art is political. Because of the presence of people in my artworks, there is always a tendency to intrigue the audience and make it interact with the artwork by asking questions about its context. In my works, which mostly consist of photographs and paintings, the main idea revolves around hardship in life. In most cases, my art depicts women’s life in their most difficult moments, when they are under pressure and forced to do something against their will. It shows pain, depression and changes in their unbearable life.

I am not trying to make up anything in my artworks; what I am doing is exactly what I see in real life, not a fantasy. It is not artificial at all. I try to convey something that either I or people who I know and who are the subjects of my artworks have experienced. I am striving to show the reality that is somehow bitter.

Sepideh Rahaa
2013, Finland