Neda Samadi

In Neda Samadi’s three works in the Continuum initiative, fabric occupies the central place in the image. Large, luminous fabrics, built from dense clusters of short, tightly packed brushstrokes, hang or float in a dark space, with a small, dark body positioned before them. These scenes bear little resemblance to the waking world. The luminous surfaces emerging from the darkness, the fabrics suspended in midair without support, and the stark difference in scale between the body and the fabric evoke the logic of dreams: a dream unfolding within a field of light, surrounded by darkness. The painter seems to reconstruct a dream, with each brushstroke serving as a trace of what remains of it. Together, these traces function like threads, forming the fabric; the reconstruction of the dream thus becomes an act of creating a new image.

In these works, fabric is both the surface on which the dream appears and a boundary between sleep and wakefulness, while the small body before it can be understood as that of a dreamer who has not yet awakened. In Samadi’s work, the dream is both a subject and a method of image-making. The fabrics in these works invite the expectation that something lies hidden behind them, yet there is nothing concealed behind them. The dream is not somewhere behind the curtain; it is the very surface constructed, stroke by stroke. The warm, reddish hues of these surfaces are also consistent with this reading, since a closed eyelid allows predominantly red light to pass through. It is as though the painter looks at the image from the very place where the dream begins: from behind the eyelid.

A sense of vulnerability, abandonment, and rejection permeates Samadi’s work. The body is small and alone, situated within a vast, dark space, either lying on the ground or standing, with nothing around it to lean on. A similar sensibility can be found in the works of several of her contemporaries. It is as though living in a country where one feels that everything is against them leads the artist to ask how such disorientation and loneliness might be endured. Samadi turns to dreams as a means of endurance.

In these works, the dream is an infinite expanse, yet this infinity does not make the body smaller or more isolated. Instead, it opens up a space that the outside world has denied it. The large, luminous fabrics set against the small body can be understood as an inward expansion of that very body. It is as though the more constricted and unprotected the outside world becomes, the more expansive and intense the dream grows. From this perspective, the smallness of the body is not a sign of defeat, but rather the point from which an infinite space opens up within.