Bahar Sabzevari (b. 1980, Iran) is a visual artist based in New York and works internationally. She has a painting practice, exploring identity through self-portraiture, narrative painting and Drawing. Her career spans over 15 years and she has worked and studied in Iran, Europe and the US. By Integrating Persian motifs, religious details and characters into her self-portraits, she explores the concept of nostalgia and creates illusions of a lost age of persian glory. Her work explores the boundaries of human identity: self-identity, freedom, restriction, and sense of place and belonging. In particular, her work looks at transient and hidden forms of identity: the imagination, hopes, fears, dreams, histories and evolution. Sabzevari’s process is research and studio-based and involves the bringing together of complex imagery, symbols and narratives, often drawing from the fields of mythology, science, religion and art history in a humoristic way.

LHG: How has COVID-19 affected your practice?

BS: My lifestyle as an artist who works in a live/work studio has not been changed that much but the way I look into my life has been changed. Uncertainty about future is part of everyday life now, everything has been paused so I am not thinking about the future in these critical times. I have lost the sense of time and sometimes I spend my time thinking about my past looking through my previous works and unfinished pieces.

I spend days and weeks reading  books that I have and wanted to read but because of the chaos in regular life we had before Covid-19 I never had the chance to read them.
My mind is at present, Lives at the moment with nostalgic flashbacks. I like to go through my childhood pictures and post them on my Instagram to remember how I spent time with my family. I think about good old days.

I am working in a new series.
Some days I go back to the pile of my unfinished paintings and work on them.  For example, I’m thinking of my project from two years ago called “Lost city” which is about the empty and deserted landscapes  and abandoned houses. This project reminds me of these days especially the first month of the quarantine where the city was empty from people. I rethink about that project and restructure it in my studio. For this body of work I was inspired by German expressionist cinema. I made maquettes out of cardboard to create a city where only animals live move around. A deserted landscape of a very simple architectural facades of an abandoned city in the middle of nowhere.

These critical times are like a challenging dream for me but I don’t want to deny the reality of it. I want to feel the sorrow that others are going through especially the essential workers and people who are affected the most.

Digital communication/Instagram is continuing to grow and experiencing a virtual life is a new normal and with all the time that I have for myself I’m trying to organize my thoughts and develop new ideas and projects and finish my old paintings at the same time.
 

LHG: How has your work has shifted as you have grown and changed over the course of your 15+ year career?

BS: My early works were more concentrated on the duality and contradictions of contemporary Iranian life.

17 years ago when I moved to France, I used to draw myself through a mirror and that was my everyday ritual and my visual diary. 
Exploring identity through self-portraiture helped me investigate the topic of identity in relation to personal and cultural sense of self. I used to create self-portraits that contain symbols representing  my identity, beliefs, values or areas of interest related to my experiences as a woman in Iran.
But now, as I am growing older I have more lines on my face which expresses my feelings by combining with my visual cultural background, the nature and animals which are the vast part of my portraits. I love animals, I live with three of them, my cats whom I share my living and working space with everyday. 

My artwork always takes a critical/humorous view of social and cultural issues. Often referencing Iranian history, exploring the varying relationships between contemporary culture and art history. Having engaged subjects as diverse as the natural history , religion and mythology , my work reproduces familiar Persian visual such patterns and symbols of traditional Persian miniatures, and medieval beasts arranging them into new conceptually layered self-portrait paintings and drawings.

LHG: What kind of research and planning goes into a piece before your start? What Is your process like when creating a work?

BS: Most of the time, I sketch and through them ideas comes to me and then I develop that idea while going over and over again with my techniques and process and layers of colors and using different materials.

I don’t limit myself in any way, I give myself a range of possibilities to make a body of work. Sometimes I have to stop it and overlook my previous works and start working on them

I do research about old Western and Persian paintings, use the characters and motifs I connect with, or the elements that can complete the narration of my paintings. I collect pictures of animals, make models and maquetts and draw from them and use my imagination as well. I always take the photo references for all my self-portrait paintings. I’m the model, the photographer and the painter at the same time.

LHG: What are some of your inspirations?

BS: My artistic inspiration comes mostly from personal challenges and experiences in life however, I get inspirations from many other sources like nature and wildlife, by taking notice of all the fascinating shapes colors and textures of animals and the vegetation in nature.
Books, as I particularly like novels from different writers around the world. Specially the novels that make me question my reality. The images and ideas trigger my imagination and my subconscious mind. Also Cinema, I watch movies as visual and conceptual nourishment, from the silent film era to the actual time and watching wildlife and animal documentaries. Visiting Museum of Natural History before the pandemic of course. and finally sketching my dreams and random objects like chimeras, made-up animals, and monsters as a daily practice to develop the visual and motor skills to gain more inspirations for my art.