Mohadese Movahed
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Aug 12
- 4 min read
Mohadese Movahed is an Iranian Canadian artist living in Vancouver. She works with painting, drawing, collage and printmaking, often starting from things she has seen in public spaces such as walls, signs, shadows or traces left behind. Her images reflect on power, control and the quiet ways people push back. Growing up in Tehran and later moving to East Vancouver, she brings both cities into her work. Pieces like “No U-Turn” and “Permanently Closed” hold a sense of stillness and pressure at the same time, like something is just beneath the surface.
Q: You’ve described public spaces as storytelling sites shaped by both power and resistance. What’s the first memory you associate with this tension?
A: In totalitarian countries where there is a wide gap between the people and the government, public spaces often become battlegrounds where different ideologies, beliefs, and worldviews collide. Growing up in Iran, I saw how public spaces were heavily used by the regime as tools of propaganda, especially to shape the minds of the younger generation. However, over the years, those very same platforms have also been reclaimed by protesters to express their voice and collective defiance.
One recent moment that perfectly illustrates this tension occurred during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement, when thousands took to the streets to protest the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of the so-called Morality Police. Women were at the forefront, and on one occasion they covered security cameras in train stations with sanitary pads. They used a taboo object to resist a regime that has spent years policing and censoring women’s bodies.
That gesture felt deeply symbolic to me: a bold act that turned an instrument of control into a tool of defiance. It was a reminder that even in the most repressive systems, resistance can take shape through everyday objects, reclaiming public space in powerful and unexpected ways.
Q: The walls in your paintings feel like active participants. How do you decide what kind of texts or images appear on them?
A: Deciding what texts or images appear on the walls in my paintings usually begins with something I’ve encountered either in the physical spaces I move through or in the digital world where I follow the news. From there, I turn to my personal archive of graffiti, stickers, stencils, and clippings from newspapers and magazines that I’ve collected over the years. I experiment with mixing and layering these elements to construct or disrupt meanings, allowing different narratives to emerge. This process takes time—I often let the painting sit in my studio while I work on other pieces, returning to it with fresh eyes to rethink and revise until the juxtapositions feel right.
Q: In “No U-Turn” and “Permanently Closed,” stillness and disruption seem to exist at once. How do you build that duality on canvas?
A: My work often explores the liminal spaces between conflicting realities that have shaped my life. Living as an immigrant means constantly navigating between opposing worlds. The simultaneous presence of stillness and disruption in my work reflects that duality where my body resides in the so-called peaceful and secure West, yet my mind remains connected to the turbulence of my homeland. Through painting, I try to capture the moments that exist just before or after something happens. I’m especially drawn to the silences, the quiet, in-between spaces that are often overlooked but speak volumes.
Q: You often depict bodies as shadows or fragments. What draws you to this nonliteral presence?
A: In my paintings, I’m interested in representing the body through its absence, using shadows, traces, and fragments as indexical signs of presence. Shadows feel fragile, yet their persistence suggests a powerful existence. While they hold meaningful and mysterious metaphors, visually, they emphasize flatness, which I bring as a contrast to other parts of the painting that are rendered with more depth and volume. This push and pull between what’s seen and what’s implied allows me to reflect on presence as something fleeting and layered while leaving space for the viewers to imagine beyond the frame of the painting.
Q: Having lived in Tehran and Vancouver, how do these cities echo through your color choices or visual language?
A: Vancouver and Tehran are vastly different cities, yet they share underlying similarities that have deeply shaped my identity and visual language.
Tehran is a dense, turbulent metropolis where daily life is marked by constant conflict and contradiction. Countless stories both joyful and sorrowful unfold beneath the surface. Growing up in Tehran taught me that freedom isn’t granted; it must be reclaimed, often at a high cost. That rebellious spirit continues to influence my practice, pushing me to use art as a form of defiance. In contrast, Vancouver is known for its natural beauty and sense of peace. But having my studio in East Vancouver, where issues like homelessness and social displacement are starkly visible, I’ve come to experience the city’s own contradictions. This tension between surface harmony and underlying struggle is reflected in my work, both visually and conceptually.
Q: Your work speaks to both personal and collective experience. What kind of conversations do you hope it sparks in the viewer?
A: I hope my work opens up conversations about systems of power in their many forms, and how vulnerability and resistance are experienced both personally and collectively. While my paintings are often rooted in personal lived experience, I intentionally leave space for ambiguity, so viewers can bring their own histories, experiences, and interpretations to the work. I’m interested in visual rhetoric and how it is shaped in the minds of the viewers depending on the culture and context to invite reflection rather than offering resolution. If the viewer walks away questioning what they have seen, or thinking about something they can’t quite articulate, then the work has done its job.
