The artist’s Iranian heritage and years spent moving through continents has not only exposed her to symbolic forms and multiple, concurrent narratives but have also inspired the language through which she articulates her own history of living in different cultural settings. Utilizing historical techniques, her works explore and experiment in scale and negative space. In her practice, detailed figures, suspended amidst contemporary urban scenes, disjointed limbs amidst delicate foliage are all arranged in stark, startling compositions that defy stylistic cannons and stretch boundaries. She often cuts and folds paper, puncturing and destabilizing space to introduce new three-dimensional depth with a shadow play.
In the collection on display, Laila Tara H takes the hyper-simplicity and informality of vexilloids as a vehicle to address questions of identity and conformity within the context of origin.