Aida Pouryeganeh

Lives and works in London, UK

Artist statement

My practice moves across painting, installation, collage and mixed media, and is rooted in experiences of displacement, belonging and the psychological effects of external structures on the individual. Migration has shaped the way I understand these concerns, but I am interested in them beyond a single geography or political context: in how conditions outside the body gradually enter it, affecting behaviour, memory, perception and one’s relationship with oneself. I rarely begin a work with a predetermined image. Making is intuitive and bodily; marks, forms and figures emerge through repetition, erasure, layering and accident. I often work on several pieces simultaneously, allowing one work to interrupt or redirect another. Rather than illustrating an experience or idea, I am interested in what remains when it passes through the process of making. Across different bodies of work, this has taken forms ranging from surveillance and internalised control to separation, grief and the instability of belonging. Figures may appear without fully resolving, writing may become unreadable, and traces of earlier actions remain visible. I allow these unresolved elements to remain rather than forcing the work towards a fixed narrative or conclusion.

Artwork