Artworks by Farideh Lashai

A great European master miniaturist and another great master artist are walking through a Frank [European] meadow discussing virtuosity and art. The more expert of the two says to the other: “painting in the new style demand such talent that if you depicted one of the trees in this forest, a man who looked upon that painting could come here, and if he so desired, correctly select that tree from among the others.”

I thank Allah that I, the humble tree before you, have not been drawn with such intent. And not because I fear that if I’d been thus depicted all the dogs in Istanbul would assume I was a real tree and piss on me: I don’t want to be a tree, I want to be its meaning.

The master miniaturist, a veritable mystic in his own right, when he brings to life the great Myths of Leyli and Majnun or Khosrow and Shirin, does so with the aim of relating numinous mystical concepts such as the souls yearning for a transcendental beloved, and as such, the visual language of the miniaturist becomes secondary to his conceptual agenda, demonstrating the power of meaning over appearance. As such, whether we are face to face with the delicate and precise miniature works of medieval manuscript illuminators, or the wholly abstract, free flowing representations of expressionist painters, we are aware that these outwardly divergent modes of expression are irrevocably bound by a metaphysical artistic agenda which manifests itself in a multiplicity of guises.

Farideh Lashai’s fascination with trees is a manifestation of this same reflective endeavor. Though the viewer is inclined to interpret the invasive forms as elements of nature, they are ultimately abstract and her choice of subject matter extends beyond the physical entity of the tree form and into its conceptual significance as a giver of life, a timeless observer of history, and a living growing artifact of nature, as the artist herself states in her autobiography: “I became inflicted with the magic of orange trees and never overcame it. The trees took hold of me and never let me go, with thousands of hands, thousands of embraces”.

Nima Sagharchi, London
October 2008

Read the complete text by Nima Sagharchi