SARA GHAHRAMANI

Dates of residency:  March till April  2018 
Born: 1984
Nationality: Iranian
Lives and works: Toronto, Canada
Education: 
2016 BA Fine Arts, OCAD University
2010 BA Design, University of Science and Culture of Tehran
Selected shows
2017 Fuse, Shangyuan Museum of Art, Beijing
2016 Experiencing Perspectives, Mercedes-Benz Financial Headquarter, Mississauga
2016 Yorkville Village Arts Festival, Yorkville Village, Toronto
2014 Inside Out, Golden Eagle Gallery, Nanjing

THE ARTIST
Sara Ghahramani is an Iranian artist based in Toronto, Canada. In her work, Ghahramani investigates the link between visual and literal language. Challenging the boundaries of abstraction and representation, her work follows the path through which subjects are translated into visual signs. Her paintings act as a registration of this transformation. Ghahramani has exhibited in Canada and internationally. 

THE RESIDENCY
Ghahramani’s paintings presented at the BAR Open Studios are the documentation of a personal investigation of Beirut; a city layered with stories. Drawing from literature, found images, and vintage Lebanese movie posters, she explores ways in which social and personal memory finds its way to the artist studio and is translated into visual language. Each mark a way of making works as part of a language in reference to the real world as well as to the history of painting. Building up and scraping off the paint is intended to create a composition of fragments where shapes and colors work as independent forms and as part of a larger whole. This transformation of reference to the abstract image is in fact an act of translation.