Work samples

  • Untitled
    Untitled
    Watercolor on paper / 6" x 9" / 2021
  • Untitled
    Untitled
    Watercolor on paper / 6" x 9" / 2021
  • Untitled
    Untitled
    Watercolor on paper / 6" x 9" / 2022
  • B
    B
    Watercolor on paper / 6" x 9" / 2021

About Mahsa

Mahsa R.Fard often paint man-made large scale structures such as cities, stadiums, and apparatuses. She tends to create a new association by introducing unusual color and spatial relationships. Growing up in Iran, she has always been conscious of the dominance of rigid patriarchal gaze both in the public and private sphere.

Accessing public and private domains as a female requires subversive strategies. Her imagery reflects a woman’s forced duplicitous roles in these domains.… more

Jump to a project:

Painting

  • Untitled
    Untitled
    Watercolor on paper / 6" x 9" / 2021
  • Untitled
    Untitled
    Watercolor and Gouache on paper / 6" x 9" / 2022
  • Untitled
    Untitled
    Watercolor on paper / 6" x 9" / 2021
  • Untitled
    Untitled
    Watercolor on paper / 6" x 9" / 2021
  • Untitled
    Untitled
    Watercolor on paper / 6" x 9" / 2022
  • Untitled
    Untitled
    Watercolor on paper / 6" x 9" / 2022
  • Untitled
    Untitled
    Watercolor on paper / 6" x 9" / 2021

Stadium Series

Growing up in Iran, I have always felt a sense of resentment, thinking about public places. Dominancy of patriarchal structure and gaze, constantly penetrate every aspect of everyday life. It is extremely apparent when it comes to places like the stadium. I try to capture the banality of these public spaces, not being able to go to stadiums as a woman maintain that structure/space highly potent for me which generates many concerns and questions. 

Why am I not allowed? Who owns stadiums? What is the relationship between gender and public domains, body, and architecture? Who is the sovereign? And what can art do?

I paint stadiums before or after the events, like an empty container which refers to the question of the potentiality. What body would occupy this space? My experience of these spaces are second-hand and mediated through photographs and TV or men who have been in stadiums, so they are distorted and partially fictional. I try to represent this gap by incorporating unusual colors and overlaying transparent surfaces to comment on inescapable traumatic experiences that come with being in a female body in a highly ideological context, where, sarcasm, camouflage, hysterical laughter or silence are survival strategies.

  • Stadium I
    Stadium I
    Stadium I/ Acrylic on Canvas/ 2019/ 11” X 10”/
  • Night Game
    Night Game
    Night game/ Acrylic on canvas paper/ 2020
  • Stadium III
    Stadium III
    Stadium III/ Acrylic on Canvas/ 2019/ 40" X 40”/
  • Stadium II
    Stadium II
    Stadium II/ Acrylic on Canvas/ 2019/ 40" X 40”/
  • Untitled
    Untitled
    Untitled/ Acrylic on Canvas/ 2019/ 13” x 18"/
  • Untitled
    Untitled
    Untitled/ Acrylic on Canvas/ 2019/ 72” x 84”/
  • Azadi Stadium
    Azadi Stadium
    Azadi stadium/ Acrylic on Canvas/ 2020/ 24”x18”