Sepideh Mehraban - Weaving Scapes

Opens 5 November at kumalo | turpin

The starting point for these paintings is Persian carpets: their intricate designs, rich colours, and distinctive motifs from different regions of Iran. Rooted in the landscapes that inspire them, these carpets hold traces of mountains, gardens, and the natural world. Earth becomes pigment; wool and silk are transformed through dyes; and, through the imagination and expertise of the weavers, threads become intricate patterns. Handwoven and passed from hand to hand through generations, carpets carry the stories of people, places, and lived experience.

In my paintings, these patterns begin to unravel, releasing fragments of colour, fine threads, delicate lines, and motifs that transform into new, imagined scapes. Although inspired by carpets and landscapes, the paintings are abstract, neither resembling the carpets themselves nor depicting recognisable places. Instead, these references dissolve and re-emerge through paint, memory, and imagination. Drawing on my experiences of Iran and South Africa, the two countries that have shaped much of my life, traces of the Alborz mountain range in Iran intertwine with the gullies of the Drakensberg in South Africa. The resulting scapes inhabit a space between the familiar and the imagined, the remembered and the felt.

At a time when the world can feel increasingly fractured, I return to the act of painting as a way of attending to what connects us. These works hold fragments of memory, traces of lived experience, and the possibility of seeing the world anew. Within them, there remains room for light, for hope, and for what is yet to come.