![](https://thenextcontemporary.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Mahsa-Merci.jpg)
Born in 1990 in Tehran, Iran, Mahsa Merci is a multidisciplinary artist who works in various media and techniques, from painting, drawing, sculpture, and collage to photography, installation, and video. Much of her work reflects a focus on marginal identities. It discusses the act of painting and collage as a natural extension of her suppressed role in Iranian society and her personal and political views as an Iranian female artist. Her works aspire to raise awareness in the audience of the hidden facets people may carry within all aspects of their identities. Mahsa reimagines and reformulates the self’s voice to offer an articulate LGBTQ language despite race, roots, color, and culture. Mahsa brings together an ongoing body of works that establishes new definitions that draw upon textures and gestures manifest across natural and sociopolitical boundaries. By combining unconventional materials and objects, she creates a new generation of portraiture, inviting the audience to come closer and investigate the definitions of pretty or ugly, soft or rough, and she or he.
Mahsa Merci has exhibited in over thirty-five solo and group exhibitions in America, Canada, Italy, Belgium, UAE, India, Cyprus, Hong Kong, and Iran. Her works are internationally published in various magazines.
![](https://thenextcontemporary.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/1-from-the-Gaze-series.jpg)
#1, From Stare series
oil on canvas
18 x 24’’
![](https://thenextcontemporary.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/26-1.jpg)
I had a Nightmare last Night … When I Opened My Mouth, a Storm Coming Out of It and We Ran Away…
Oil on canvas and Silicone
28 x 22’’