Argoon Art | Sell online in the simplest way possible
m.shojaei@ttbnco.com 
Simin Keramati (b. 1970, Tehran) is a multidisciplinary artist. Central to her practice is the use of her own image as the model for her works, or as she calls it, its ‘interpreter’. In her video ‘Self-Portrait’ (2007-2008), Keramati deals with her own female identity. While her face slowly melts into the black background, handwritten phrases in both English and Persian appear on screen, expressing the artist’s thoughts and emotions at the time of creation. The video dramatically addresses the process of losing her own face – her personal identity, erased by cultural conventions of Islamic societies, where women have to wear a veil. Much of Keramati’s work draws on feeling of anxieties, fears or traumas derived from violent events that include the bloodsheds resulting from conflicts in the Middle East. In her 2012 video ‘Biopsy of a Close Memory’, the artist is dressed in white and ‘slapped’ in the face with splashes of red paint, a symbol for the memory of violence witnessed in the news. Her graphic and stylised paintings also comment on the contradictions inherent in her cultural and social environment, rich with history and traditions, yet prone to oppression, violence, destruction and war.
