A Mirror Has Two Faces is the Iranian-born, New York-based artist’s first solo exhibit. It shows off Farassat’s large-scale steel sculptures as well as her paintings and works on paper.
Born and raised in Iran, Farassat’s work has been largely influenced by a culture and tradition that she feels embraces a distorted sense of reality. As such, her work tells of the desire to break free from social and cultural constraints and explore one’s inner self.
“I have made the image of a veiled woman with a devil’s horn as a metaphor for exploring issues that focus on hidden identity, cultural ambiguity, suppression, and sexual objectification,” Farassat explained.
In her large-scale steel sculptures, Farassat explores her psychology, creating objects that are disconcerting, due to their subtle references to body parts and organs. The sculptures at the same time project a quiet and delicate beauty, which seems contradictory to their sheer mass and scale.
Curator and writer David Gibson writes in an essay, “The paintings that fill Roya Farassat’s solo exhibition ‘A Mirror with Two Faces’ present a variety of symbolic portraits that reflect the repressive social conditions in her homeland of Iran and the psychological repercussions that have resulted from them. What begins as a form of social critique gives way to a pantheon of ciphers and phantoms that are iconic and pathetic, expressive and opaque. We can view them alternately as a reflection of ourselves, or of a world in which we do not belong.”
Farrasat left Iran prior to the 1979 revolution. She currently works as a sculptor, painter, calligrapher and a teaching artist. Farrasat received her bachelor’s in fine arts (BFA) from Parsons School of Design in New York, and attended the Sculpture Center School. Her work has been exhibited in group shows in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Florida, Kuwait and Dubai.
