Salman Khoshroo Iranian, b. 1983
Weaving inanimate fibers into faces has brought me comfort and helped with overcoming my own experience of contracting the virus. These portraits are delicate and vulnerable and resonate with my own precarious situation. We live in fragile times, and I feel the need to find new materials and the mindset to reinvent my practice. Wool brings warmth and intimacy to these portraits and plays with provoking the nurture instinct.
Khoshroo is an Iranian artist living and working in Tehran. Having gained a bachelors in Digital Art from the Australian National University, Khoshroo transitioned his craft and became a self-taught painter. His works depict distorted figures in highly emotional states and dismantles our preconceived notions of gender and beauty. Khoshroo's 'Wool Portrait Series' questions and reinterprets the masculine condition. The delicacy and warmth of the wool encapsulates Khoshroo's experience of quarantine and recent trauma. Through variances in the rigidity of the wool, Khoshroo reveals the tensions and elasticity within the human form; tightening the wool to create strength within the neck structure.