Farah Al Qasimi: Psychic Repair unfolds as a vivid, immersive experience that blurs the boundaries between image, sound, and belief. Installed across the SCAD Museum of Art’s façade vitrines and interior gallery, the exhibition plays with shifts in scale and dimension, inviting viewers to navigate a visual environment that feels at once intimate and overwhelming. Al Mona Bozorgi: Strain and Strand presents a powerful meditation on image-making, materiality, and resistance. Through an innovative fusion of photography, sculpture, and fiber-based practices, Bozorgi transforms photographs into tactile objects that speak to the lived realities of women navigating visibility and constraint. The exhibition invites viewers to slow down and consider how images circulate, fracture, and endure—particularly when they emerge from moments of political urgency and personal risk.
At the core of this body of work are photographs printed on silk, a material chosen for both its delicacy and extraordinary strength. Bozorgi carefully unravels these images into individual strands, then reassembles them into dense, textured compositions. The source imagery—self-portraits shared online by Iranian women protesting compulsory hijab laws—retains its emotional charge even as it is physically transformed. Each strand carries a fragment of a face, a gesture, or a moment of defiance, echoing how digital images are consumed in pieces on glowing screens.
Mounted within wooden frames that recall early photographic cases, the works draw a subtle line between the origins of photography and its contemporary, networked life. These intimate enclosures suggest both protection and confinement, reinforcing the tension between exposure and control that defines much of the exhibition. Bozorgi’s process highlights how the act of self-representation can be simultaneously empowering and vulnerable, especially when the body becomes a site of political negotiation.
Strain and Strand also speaks to collective strength. While each silk filament appears fragile on its own, together they form resilient structures that resist collapse. This material metaphor underscores the solidarity forged among women who, through shared images and gestures, challenge systems of authority. The works remind us that public-facing images are never merely visual; they are acts, risks, and declarations woven into broader movements for autonomy.
Grounded in rigorous research and a deep engagement with feminist and posthuman theory, Bozorgi’s practice bridges scholarship and making. Her work insists that photographs are not passive records, but active participants in shaping identity and history. In transforming images into strands of resistance, Strain and Strand offers a quiet yet resolute tribute to endurance, connection, and the power of collective visibility.
Image: Mona Bozorgi, "Monocular II," 2025, archival inkjet print on silk (dismantled), 39 1/2 x 13 in. Courtesy of the artist. © Mona Bozorgi
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