Maryam Hoseini (*1988 in Tehran, Iran) utilizes painting and site-specific installation to investigate the political, social, and personal conditions of identity and gender in relation to the concept of ruins, displacement, and fracture. Her work explores the spaces in between painting and drawing, figuration and abstraction, and the subtle relationship between bodies, physical space, and the politics of narrative. Delicate pencil drawings on the surface of her paintings subvert the hierarchy between drawing and painting, lending the works a distinctly ‘unfinished’ quality. Much of Hoseini’s practice revolves around the concept of incompleteness.
Her architectural approach that connects the painting to the spatial context in which it is displayed reflects Hoseini’s method of rebuilding form and spirit, rather than just representing it: “It made a collective space that holds these standing bodies, and it made me less interested in the individual. I like to address them as a group, with context, where the viewer is a participant.”

Maryam Hoseini (b. 1988, Tehran, Iran) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA from Sooreh Art University in Tehran, Iran in 2012 and MFA degrees from Bard College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, both in 2016. Hoseini’s recent solo and two-person exhibitions include "Promise To be Good", Deborah Schamoni (2021), “After You,” Green Art Gallery, Dubai (2020),“Yes Sky,” Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York (2020); “Body Armor,” MoMA P.S.1, New York (2018); and “Of Strangers and Parrots,” Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York (2017). She has participated in group exhibitions at the New Museum, New York (2021), Ca’ del Duca, Venice (2019); 56 Henry, New York (2019); Arts Club, London (2019); and others. In 2019, Hoseini co-curated “She Models for Her” as part of the inaugural “Open Call” exhibition at the Shed, New York.


Art21 New York Close Up | Maryam Hoseini's Every Day Abstractions