A saga of surreal paintings
Sarah Hojjati's solo show opens today at Shilpangan
On the occasion of the 15th Dhaka International Film Festival 2017, Shilpangan Gallery in association with Rainbow Film Society is holding a solo painting exhibition by Iranian film activist and painter Sarah Hojjati. Renowned Bangladeshi Artist Rafiqun Nabi will inaugurate the exhibit, titled “My Dream World”, at the gallery at 5pm today.
On behalf of the Rainbow Film Society, its president Ahmed Muztaba Zamal, eminent writer and researcher Mofidul Hoque and chief adviser Rabiul Husain will be present at the opening ceremony.
This year, Rainbow Film Society is celebrating its 40 founding years and the festival's silver jubilee.
Sarah, who was born and raised up in Tehran, studied animation in art school and later in a university. She also trained by Alireza Chalipa. Her paintings are mostly surrealistic.
As a self-trained painter, Sarah's works can't be confined to the methods and motifs of contemporary painting. Her works are equal parts beautiful and moving - with a distinct aesthetic and a personality to match.
Nothing in her work is as it appears in the surface. There is a bit of surrealism, some romanticism, and above all, a totally unique voice in Sarah's material. Her paintings are arresting in their potential to illicit powerful emotions about human relations and, at the same time, human alienation.
She paints in the way of observation, but her observations don't mean watching the reality and depicting it on canvas or mirroring the outside world. Observation, in the way she does, is a kind of dreaming that goes beyond the boundaries of logic and normal rationality and enters a fantasy world that sometimes emulates our nightmares.
She started painting at a very young age and grew up day-dreaming and obsessed with supernatural creatures. Not surprisingly, Sarah has a background in animation as well. Later, she developed a desire to form her fantasy worlds, which is essentially what you find in her paintings. She balances the delicate and the bold, realizing mysterious figures that are simultaneously both innocent and erotic.