Atefeh Ahmadi has written, “Rahmanian seeks new points of connection, between things, ideas, senses, between herself and the world.” She notes that Rahmanian’s visual language is rooted in the literary and visual culture of Iran. Ahmadi suggests that “Rahmanian paints in the semiotics of Persian poetry,” materializing “the language’s spectral and elusive sensibility with her painterly “figures of speech.”

Her work vibrates with the light-heartedness and playful spirit found in the meditations of the Persian poet and astronomer, Khayyam, on the cyclic dance of nothingness and being, personified in her work as the shape of the circle. She also engages with more literal forms of personification, drawn from proverbs and the witty humor characteristic of the Persian satirical literary tradition. In this way, her canvases challenge and expand the possibilities of living in one’s own language as a migrant.

Rahmanian begins with moments of everyday life, teeth marks on an apple, bent through memory, and resulting in what Ahmadi calls a “fleshy, moist optics.” For her, this “act of remembering is inseparable from the act of painting: its materiality, and its extension to the thickly material world.”

Sara Rahmanian (b. 1993, Tehran, Iran) has mounted recent solo exhibitions at 1969 Gallery, New York, NY (2022), Acro_sss Project, Milan, Italy (2021), and Delgosha Gallery, Tehran, Iran (2017). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Office Baroque, Antwerp, Belgium (2022); Harkawik Gallery, New York (2022); Stable, S-Chanf, Switzerland (2021); and Lyles & King Gallery, New York, NY (2021). She won the Clifford Ross Scholarship Award and Critical Practice Grants from Yale School of Art and has seen her work featured in The Art Gorgeous Magazine, ArtEast, and Les Nouveaux Riches Magazine. Rahmanian earned her BFA in Painting from the University of Art Tehran, Iran, in 2016 and her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University, New Haven, CT, in 2021. She lives and works in New Haven, CT.