Oil on Canvas
2022

Brought up in a conversative and religious family, Hosseini for years denied the trauma that she experienced as a result of her upbringing. During a recent cathartic trip to Hormoz, an Island in the Persian Gulf, Hosseini found inspiration in her homeland’s nature and through liberating human interactions. From this trip was born a new series of works, of which Present in the Moment is a seminal example. Now leaning towards fully embracing her past, but also her female body, Hosseini thoughtfully questions the values she was taught and those she rejected, and freely expresses her own identity. Painting like self-therapy has helped her deal with past traumas, as she tackles themes around her personal bodily expression, like a metaphor for the liberation from shame, embarassment, guilt, social restrictions and chastity that had been imposed on women for centuries and on herself, for years. Looking closer at the composition, one is drawn to the fly on the man’s face. As we pay attention, we see the reflection of the painter herself, through the man’s pupil, alike an invitation to fully appreciate the present moment and freeze it forever in our memory.