Samaneh Motallabi

The trace of the passing years and minutes,

For Samaneh Matlabi, drawing is not the application of principles but a process of seeing. Redrawing, combining forms, exaggerating, or introducing contradiction are all ways of translating this experience of seeing into visual language. While the hand, the eye, and the brain must cooperate in the act of drawing, the essential element remains the capacity to see, driven by curiosity. It is this capacity that gives each artist their unique voice and, in Matlabi's case, engenders an encounter with the world imbued with an intensity and beauty impossible to achieve otherwise.

Her works, initially linear and conceptual, have gradually incorporated fabric and thread embroidery, which have now become essential markers of her practice. Rejecting the strict rules of traditional embroidery, she uses the needle as others use a paintbrush, constructing surfaces through a multitude of fine, repeated stitches. These seams, often tight and dense, reveal forms that, from a distance, unfold into silhouettes and sometimes dreamlike compositions.

Matlabi opts for a limited palette, dominated by reds and creams. This economy of means gives his works a minimalist appearance, but behind this chromatic restraint lies extreme meticulousness: the accumulation of threads, the patient repetition of gestures, the superimposition of stitches create a temporal and material depth that inscribes each piece in time.

Humanity occupies a central place in her work. The faces she creates, often suspended between laughter, tears, and indifference, connect with a long artistic and philosophical tradition that explores the ambiguity of the soul's states. These figures, embroidered on fabrics sometimes printed with old photographs, seem imbued with memory and the passage of time. They appear as silent presences, beings never erased despite distance or oblivion.

The collages and hybrid forms that populate her faces—insects, birds, fish—symbolically convey the weight of years and experiences that accumulate in human existence. Her works thus evoke continuity and persistence: those of beings who have disappeared but are still present, in the fabric of the world and in collective memory.

Samaneh Matlabi thus establishes herself as an artist of nuance and endurance, whose work with thread transcends mere decoration to become a language in its own right. In her hands, the design moves from paper to textile, from line to stitch, to explore the fragility and strength of what connects us to the world.