ART CITIES: Paris-Hoda Kashiha

Although Hoda Kashiha’s pictorial approach is in the American pop vein, her works address themes that resonate with the complex socio- political situation in her native Iran. The manifestations of hostility, oppression and struggle that she observes on a daily basis fuel her reflection, encouraging her to tackle sensitive subjects such as identity, femininity and gender, among others. In the face of violence and gravity, the artist often employs fantasy and humor: a mechanism known by populations subjected to systems of oppression, allowing them to endure the political and social situation of their country.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Galerie Nathalie Obadia Archive

In “The Tale of a Pot’s Voyage That Longed to Become Human”, Hoda Kashiha unveils five new paintings that mark a decisive evolution in her artistic language, the exhibition presents a body of work that resonates like the chapters of an initiation narrative — a fable of transformation imbued with both political urgency and imaginative freedom.

Born in Tehran in 1986, Kashiha’s practice has long bridged visual idioms drawn from American pop and digital aesthetics with the complex socio–political environment of her native Iran. Her canvases are born from the tension between what is seen and what must be hidden — a visual and psychological topography shaped by themes of hostility, oppression and resistance. Through poignant juxtapositions of humor and gravity, her work channels survival mechanisms familiar to communities under systems of repression, conveying both the weight of lived reality and the irrepressible drive toward hope.

In this new series, Kashiha takes a significant artistic turn by engaging deeply with the imagery of eighteenth-century Indian miniatures, not as decorative motifs but as a symbolic language capable of bearing resistance and transformation. These sources — particularly the refined visual vocabulary of the Kangra style — provide a poetic foundation for her work, offering new referential layers without diminishing its political resonance.

The paintings unfold through saturated hues and figures that fluidly move between object and body, memory and myth. Central to the series are vessels and vases: objects that, in folk narrative, serve both ritual and fantastical roles. In Kashiha’s pictorial universe, these forms transcend function to become characters in their own right — anthropomorphic, enigmatic and tied to a primordial gesture of creation reminiscent of clay modeling. This practice, Kashiha suggests, mirrors a meditative choreography of thought and materiality, where form and psyche converge.

Within these works, an animistic dimension takes shape: objects become charged with emotional and symbolic heft, operating as narrative actors that embody both vulnerability and resilience. Houses dissolve into unstable metaphors while flowers caught in storm winds dramatize the threshold between beauty and violence. One particularly evocative canvas depicts the torso of a woman bending toward a flower amid gusts that twist fabric and petals in a precarious dance — a testament to the characters’ ongoing capacity to endure, adapt and transform.

Kashiha’s journey — from her studies at Tehran University of Art, through an exchange at Boston University under the encouragement of Dana Frankfort to shift from drawing to painting, to her current transcontinental practice splitting time between Tehran, Paris and New York — has exposed her to a breadth of art histories and visual dialogues. This mobility has sharpened her capacity to integrate global references with personal and political narratives, resulting in a work that is both singular and universally resonant.

“The Tale of a Pot’s Voyage That Longed to Become Human” is not simply a continuation of Kashiha’s exploration of identity, femininity and the politics of visibility; it announces a renewed equilibrium, a world where transformation is not only possible but necessary. In these canvases, where color vibrates with intensity and symbolism opens into metaphor, Kashiha invites viewers to dwell in the space between laughter and lament, imagination and resistance — and, ultimately, toward a horizon of hope and freedom.

Photo left: Hoda Kashiha, Gaze into a Glass of Wine in the Rainy Night, 2025, Acrylic and pastel on canvas, 150 x 120 x 4 cm (59 x 47 3/16 x 1 9/16 inches), © Hoda Kashiha, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia. Photo right: Hoda Kashiha, Drink, Drink until the Red Flows Everywhere like Blood from the Trail of that Crimson the Sun Slowly Rise, 2025, Acrylic and pastel on canvas, 180 x 150 x 4 cm (70 13/16 x 59 x 1 9/16 inches), © Hoda Kashiha, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia

Info: Galerie Nathalie Obadia, 3 rue du Cloître Saint-Merri, Paris, France, Duration: 30/1-28/3/2026, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.nathalieobadia.com/