I depict my mental space in the greenhouses and I use different techniques and materials in each one. Maryam Mehri's installation exhibition titled "Greenhouse No. 2; "Fake Memory" stands in the patio of Mohsen Gallery. In an interview with Art Online, Mehri stated that this show is the continuation of Greenhouse No. 1, which he exhibited in O Gallery in 2018, and said: My Greenhouses are related to environmental trends, and at the same time, I may mention other issues. My greenhouses continue and in each one I depict my own mental space, but I may use different techniques and materials.
She added: In Greenhouse No. 2, which is titled Fake Memory, I refer to a memory from my childhood. In my mind, I have an image of pulling wild black flowers from the roots and then growing them in the garden, but because these plants were wild, they were destroyed.
After I learned about species extinction, I felt that maybe I had uprooted the plants and caused the species to become extinct, so I felt very bad. At the same time, I thought that with the spring season, people rush to dig the car plants and many times they uproot them and make the plants vulnerable to extinction, she said.
Over time, I became familiar with the subject of false memory in psychology. Our mind creates memories based on our own memories or based on other people's memories, or manipulates a memory, and for this reason we do not have access to the original memory. And we cannot say what reality is.
Pointing out that the material of his works is cloth and he used glass wool and plastic fence inside them, he said: In this work, two mountains of cloth can be seen, which are reflections of each other and are suspended from the ceiling, she said.
Above them, a network of fabric flowers is installed at a height of about 10 meters. The mountains have a precise and predetermined finish, because I wanted to get the feeling we get from seeing the mountain in this exhibition and see it in front of us. But the flowers have a design style, that is, not much attention has been paid to them. Sometimes flowers even look like animals, and this is because of the free form and the design of the species.
Mehri said about the reason for using fabric in making this work: I grew up with sewing and I feel close to fabric. So I thought I could make anything with fabric. The choice of the color of the fabric was also due to the black flowers that remain in my mind and I also wanted the mountains to have a color similar to soil and stones.
My mind is very storyteller and anything can have a story for me. Imagination and sense of humor play an important role in my paintings and volumetric works.
By Hossein Vaziri