Elham Fatapour is a Toronto-based artist and a graduate of York University with an MFA in visual arts. Her recent work includes painting, performance, and mixed-media installation. Her work is charged with empathetic visions, reified into mixed-media installations involving paintings and installations.

In her art, ‘In The Depth,’ part of her self-portrait series, she uses traditional carpet designs and portrays human bodies enmeshed with aged fragments of handmade carpets. 

“The patterns and colours have different symbols to propose non-normative ways of understanding history, as each work meshes together with human bodies to create a larger homogenized being that involves all people.”

She adds:

“I think of my practice as a vessel for memories of past traumas. My own intense experiences refer to broader themes of feminism, depression, and anxiety that affect all ethnicities. I use imagery, colour and technique to charge my paintings with empathy and present them in mixed media installations that encompass the viewer. In order to convey both personal narratives and connect with a larger context, I depict my body in foreign spaces. I often paint a large quantity of figurative work, at life scale.”

Image Credits:
Feature Image: Bruce Warrington, On Unsplash, Creative Commons
Body Images: Elham Fatapour, Used with Artist’s Permission