Maryam Palizgir

This series explores the fragile threshold between presence and erasure, examining how memory shapes the imagination over time in subtle and often imperceptible ways. Each work combines layered painted imagery of dried botanical fragments, chandeliers, and architectural forms on translucent paper, suspending them in a state of uncertainty. These motifs hover within the composition, neither fully present nor fully absent, held in tension by the materials that surround them.
The framing establishes the image as something viewed through filtered, partial, and mediated rather than directly encountered. It positions memory itself as an act of looking across distance, shaped by concealment, protection, and fragmentation.
Black and white handmade paper surfaces, punctured with organic holes, evoke porosity, erosion, and breath, recalling processes of natural decay. At the same time, these perforations echo the logic of architectural lattice screens, offering only partial views and reinforcing ideas of mediation and selective visibility.
The translucent layers both obscure and reveal, reflecting the instability of memory and the soft defacement that occurs through time. Painted forms are intentionally blurred, resisting sharp definition. This visual imprecision mirrors the way memory distorts: images surface, dissolve, and reassemble, never fully intact.
Thread and stitch bind the layered elements together, not as concealed repairs but as deliberate, visible marks. The exposed stitches acknowledge imperfection and history, allowing the act of mending to become part of the work’s narrative.
Within this layered structure, the chandelier operates as a metaphorical source of illumination. It gestures toward the act of lighting the dark corners of history and personal memory, offering a fragile means of revealing what has been forgotten, suppressed, or overlooked. Rather than fully illuminating, it casts an uncertain glow suggesting that remembrance is always partial and contingent.