Mahsa Farzi - I eat you alive!

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Mahsa Farzi, “Untitled,” no date

(courtesy Mahsa Farzi and THIS Gallery)

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 8 from noon - 4 PM. The artist will be in attendance.

THIS Gallery is thrilled to announce a solo exhibition of new work by Vancouver-based Iranian artist, Mahsa Farzi.

Mahsa Farzi’s work exists in a space between knowing and not knowing, remembering and forgetting. She explores the fluid nature of memory and identity, particularly in the experience of migration. Each piece emerges intuitively from emotions, fragmented memories, and subconscious impressions.

Much of her inspiration comes from Iranian local stories and mythology, though her work does not aim to directly depict these narratives. Instead, they flow through her practice like echoes, fading and reappearing in abstraction and figuration. For Farzi, abstractions are rooted in moments of deep feeling; memories that are no longer clear but still linger as sensations.

“The figures depicted in the paintings and sculptures included in I eat you alive! are frustrated, exhausted and yet still somehow defiant. They perfectly express the (often quiet) obstinance felt by empaths when faced with another day of living in a world designed to demean love, compassion, care-giving and empathy as ‘weakness’. All the while knowing that caring for others is humanity’s greatest strength,” says curator Shannon Pawliw.

The process of making is a way for Farzi to navigate an in-between space, familiar to those who have crossed borders, both physically and mentally. Her work exists in this threshold, where forms shift, meanings fluctuate, and past and present merge into new visual languages.