Arghavan Khosravi’s New Paintings Turn the Altarpiece Into a Site of Tension
Arghavan Khosravi, born in Iran and now based in Connecticut, has opened a new chapter in her painting practice by working through the form of the altarpiece. In her latest works, compartments, doors, and curtains interrupt the image, creating a sense that something is being guarded, delayed, or only partly revealed. The result is intimate rather than monumental, even when the subject matter is charged with war, memory, and political pressure.
The new body of work is on view in What Remains at Uffner & Liu through July 2. Khosravi said she made these smaller, pared-down paintings after a period of larger, more expansive work, wanting to explore “more intimate spaces.” She began them before tensions between the United States and Iran escalated into warfare, but the works already reflected her interest in “personal, psychological space” and the emotional residue of being raised in Iran.
That tension runs through the exhibition’s imagery. In Behind a Curtain, a bullet passes through a mirror, its golden tail echoing a light source in a shirt pocket. Khosravi described the image as a symbol of disruption and instability, shaped by the background presence of conflict in her life. Born during the Iran-Iraq War, she said that shadow has left a lasting psychological imprint.
Her visual language reaches far beyond the present. Persian miniature paintings remain a key reference, especially for the way women are often minimized or absent. Medieval illustrations inform Home, which reimagines the iconography of Christ’s side wound in a distinctly vaginal form. Greek and Roman sculpture appears in The Listener, where a cracked classical face replaces the youthful feminine beauty that recurs elsewhere in her work.
Khosravi moved to the United States in 2015 to pursue an MFA in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. After living in different parts of the Northeast, she settled in Connecticut, where she works from a home studio. Her concerns have sharpened alongside events in Iran, especially the Zan, Zendegi, Azadi movement that followed the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini. That political moment also shaped her 2023–24 exhibition True to Self, which featured freestanding female warriors.
Women remain central to her work, but not as symbols of passive endurance. In The Drop, two side panels show women covering their faces with one hand while the other is trapped in wooden stocks. The central panel evokes a guillotine before a pomegranate tree, a motif tied to life, fertility, and prosperity. Khosravi has said that even under harsh conditions, hope remains essential.
She will also be included in the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum’s forthcoming decennial in Ridgefield, Connecticut, which runs from June 7, 2026 to January 10, 2027. Together, the two exhibitions suggest an artist increasingly focused on how history, symbolism, and lived experience can be folded into a single, unsettled image.
