During Art Basel week in October 2025, Soraya Sharghi presented "Sculpture and Painting" at 24 Avenue Matignon in Paris. The exhibition gathered recent bronze, ceramic and painted works in one immersive space. It showed hybrid figures and hand-shaped ceramic guardians, and included the painting "Rising with the Song of Nymphs" (2022). Sharghi described myth and memory as languages of survival and rebirth that run through the show.
Sharghi was born in 1988 in Tehran and is now based in New York. She studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she began to work with painting, sculpture and installation at the same time. As a child she invented stories for her sister, a habit she says still shapes her art; she has called imagination a refuge and surrealism a way to survive reality.
She uses many materials because each gives a different language: clay taught patience and surrender, while painting demanded honesty. She often treats glazes like pigments, layering them as if painting with fire. Time in Jingdezhen, China, deepened her ceramics practice as she worked with clay while war and unrest unfolded in Iran. In Isfahan she studied old embossed-glazed cups and developed Sofal-e Berjasteh-inspired pieces. Her hybrid female figures combine human, animal and myth traits and stand as portraits of resilience.
Difficult words
- exhibition — A public showing of artworks.
- ceramic — Objects made from fired clay.ceramics
- immersive — Creating a full surrounding experience.
- myth — Traditional story about gods or heroes.
- imagination — Ability to create new mental images.
- glaze — A shiny glass layer on ceramics.glazes
- pigment — A colored material used in paint.pigments
- resilience — The ability to recover from difficulties.
Tip: hover, focus or tap highlighted words in the article to see quick definitions while you read or listen.
Discussion questions
- How can different materials (clay, bronze, paint) change the feeling of an artwork? Give one example.
- Sharghi calls imagination a refuge. When have you used imagination to feel better or to solve a problem?
- Do you like artworks that mix human and animal traits (hybrid figures)? Why or why not?
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