Elham | Contemporary Artist: Artworks & Biography

After studying design, painting, and drawing in Tehran, Elham, born in 1983 in Iran, continued her studies in France and eventually obtained a doctorate in Fine Arts at the University of Strasbourg. She began learning to paint at the age of 10 in private classes given in her hometown of Shiraz. Faced with the prohibitions of being a woman and an artist, painting was the only means of expression, "a kind of oppositional language that allowed me to escape in extremis from a career as an engineer" explains the artist. Inspired by the works of Roberto Mata, Francesco Clemente, Edouard Pignon, and in Iran by Rokni Haerizadeh, she uses acrylic, oil and pastel, as well as pencil, even if she admits that she would like to return to oil painting. All techniques are good to give body to her creation. \Neither figuratist nor abstract, she is a little between the two at the border. What she is looking for is the reflection that is hidden behind reality, "the bridge that links the visible to the invisible". "What helps me to achieve this is the introduction of space, length, width and depth, these are three things that I must transfer to the white surface, to find the invisible object that I have already seen in the visible. Her departure to Belgium and then France in 2010, the condition of the artist and women in Iran remain key elements in her creative journey. Light, bright color and space without perspective are also very characteristic of her art that remains influenced by her country of origin. Thus, she devotes herself to the Persian miniatures of the 19th century, which are reflected in a different light in her works. "In the continuation of my work I want to show more Iranian looks that I am aware of now. This is thanks to the trip to France, because here I think more than before about the characteristics of Iranian painting and its composition, and also about many things like Iranian mythology and iconography, and the relationship between painting and literature.