Solmaz Tohidloo

Born in Iran, Tohidloo studied painting at Tehran’s Fine Art University. After living in silence for a long time, she is determined to show the images that exist in her soul, images of the female spirit, without aesthetic trickeries. These images represent her: the way she feels, her spirit with its simple greatness, and images of silence, loneliness and distance. Tohidloo often decorates her paintings with quotations, which are mostly taken from ghazals (Persian odes) written by the renowned Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhi Rūmī, commonly known as Rumi. 

Today’s modern era, with all its progression, still has no answer for the loneliness of human beings. One reason for this is the humanity’s warped perception of one another and the conflicts between them. It seems like the same mystery that attempts to conceal the tragedy. Tohidloo’s women, who were abundant in the affliction of happiness in the past, are now looking for themselves within a cold frame of abandonment, which is inevitable due to loneliness, constantly in search of the time that has passed. In the end it is she, who is left alone, silent and lonely, who is worried about what has happened and what will happen.

These women, whose eyes are frigid and hollow with emptiness, still have hope. For them, hope is the only condition with which they are not afflicted, and only have loyalty as their greatest support. Long shadows behind their gazes represent the hidden powers of silent and lonely women.

Sardari, Tehran, 2020

The new artworks that Solmaz has presented in these recent years attempt to talk openly to the viewer. In this series of works, the form has altered; without it being forced to keep a distance from the meaning. The blackness of the words and letters do not contain any evident or literal sense; the word is all about the meaning, a concept for speaking. The women of these works are similar to those contemporary ones we meet every day and are lost in the hues and cries of the surroundings. The excitement of the colour tries to replace this tumult. In these works, contrary to the previous ones, the connection with the work is considered to be way beyond identification; it is the viewer that is illustrated in the middle of the frame on the canvas. In some of these works, the bird has been placed in the hands of the narrator of the image with such serenity as if it is not worried about staying at all. The word is this: they will fly together.